Papadopoulos Hints Conversation That Launched Trump-Russia Probe Was FBI Setup

1. Saturday evening, Papadopoulos rocked Twitter with claims that “a woman in London, who was the FBI’s legal attaché in the U.K.” encouraged him “to meet Joseph Mifsud in Rome in March 2016.” These new revelations raise fresh concerns that, with the approval of the FBI, foreign governments were meddling in the 2016 election.
2. After all, Papadopoulos met Mifsud on March 14, 2016, while traveling to Rome with the London center to which he was then connected, and Trump’s campaign did not announce Papadopoulos’s selection as a foreign policy advisor for another week.
3. Then on March 24, 2016, Mifsud traveled to London, “where he introduced George to a young woman named Olga,” telling the newly named Trump advisor that Olga was Russian President Vladimir Putin’s niece and suggesting they could arrange meetings with high-level Russian officials.
4. The DOJ and FBI would later seek a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act order to surveil another Trump foreign policy advisor, Carter Page, and the FISA application reiterated the FBI’s claim that it had launched a counterintelligence investigation on July 31, 2016, after learning of Papadopoulos’s conversation with Downer.
5. The recently released transcript of George Papadopoulos’s congressional testimony reveals a significant fact: Papadopoulos’s introduction to Joseph Mifsud—the source of the “Russia has Hillary’s emails” tip that purportedly prompted the FBI to launch an investigation into the Trump campaign—was arranged mere days after Papadopoulos announced he was joining the Trump campaign.
6. On April 26, 2016, Mifsud also shared a tip with Papadopoulos over a breakfast meeting in London: Mifsud told Papadopoulos “that he had just returned from a trip to Moscow where he had met with high-level Russian government officials,” and had learned that “the Russians had obtained dirt on candidate Clinton,” namely thousands of Clinton’s emails.
7. But Papadopoulos’s congressional testimony reveals that his meeting with Mifsud was arranged by individuals who knew he would soon be joining the Trump campaign as a foreign policy advisor.
8. Then, continuing throughout the summer of 2016, Papadopoulos attempted “to arrange meetings between the Russian government and campaign officials,” working with Mifsud and Mifsud’s supposed Russian connections.
9. From there, Mifsud had but to groom Papadopoulos with promises of Russia connections that would allow him to shine in his new role as a foreign policy advisor to Trump.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/01/papadopoulos-hints-conversation-launched-trump-russia-probe-fbi-setup/