Trump Aide's Confession May Be Bigger Than Manafort's Indictment

WASHINGTON, DC — As former Trump campaign Chairman Paul Manafort turned himself in to law enforcement Monday morning on 12 criminal charges, the FBI revealed that another of the president's ex-staffers has pleaded guilty to lying to investigators and impeding the federal probe into Russian intervention in the 2016 election.

George Papadopoulos, who served as one of Trump's foreign policy advisers in 2016, has admitted to covering up contacts with people he believed worked for the Russian government during his time on the campaign, case files show.

While Manafort's indictment on charges of conspiracy and financial crimes garnered most of the attention Monday morning, Papadopoulos's confession could be an even bigger break in the Trump-Russia story. It casts serious doubt on the president's claim that there was "no collusion" between his campaign and the Kremlin.

"Through his false statements and omissions, [the] defendant ... impeded the FBI's ongoing investigation into the existence of any links or coordination between individuals associated with the Campaign and the Russian government's efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election," according to the FBI document.

Preet Bharara, a former U.S. attorney who was fired by the president, said that Papadopoulos's plea "portends more charges to come."

During a plea agreement hearing, special counsel lawyer Aaron Zelinsky told the judge of Papadopoulos's charges: "[T]here's a large-scale ongoing investigation of which this case is a small part."

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

Also See: What you need to know about the Manafort-Gates indictment

Read more: Paul Manafort, Trump's Ex-Campaign Chair, Turns Himself In

The documents go on to say that Papadopoulos sent an email to a "high-ranking Campaign official" about Russia's interest in meeting with Trump. That official, unnamed in the documents, forwarded that email along to another official and added: "Let[']s discuss. We need to communicate that DT is not doing these trips. It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal."

The case files also reveal that Papadopoulos met in April of 2016 with a professor who said that he was in contact with Russian government officials. Papadopoulos said that he learned that "the Russians had emails of [Hillary] Clinton" and "they have thousands of emails."

Later in the campaign, the hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta were publicly leaked. Trump campaign officials dismissed claims that the Russians were involved in the leak. As president, Trump has repeatedly called the story of Russian intervention in the election a "hoax."

These denials became suspect when Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., revealed that he had taken a meeting in June 2016 with a woman said to be a Russian government lawyer to obtain "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. Manafort and Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, also attended the meeting. This meeting suggests that Trump's team was aware of Russia's cyberattacks before the emails were released.

The Papadopoulos confession further implies that the Trump campaign knew about the Russian government's hacking of the emails several months before the June meeting.

The timeline and series of events described in the documents is consistent with the intelligence community's state finding that Russian government agents attempted to cultivate contacts within the Trump campaign.

In August 2017, the Washington Post reported that Papadopoulos had sought to arrange meetings between Russian officials and top Trump campaign staff before the election. At the time, Manafort said in a statement that the emails proved that the Russia story is "fake news." Papadopoulos was arrested in late July, before the Post's story was published.

The document detailing Papadopoulos's admission of guilt suggests he may now be a cooperating witness in Mueller's continuing investigation: "Following his arrest, [the] defendant met with the Government on numerous occasions to provide information and answer questions," the case files said.

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Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images