The 30-year-old Chicago man who entered the first guilty plea in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of the Russian government’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 election is just a “small part” of a much larger investigation, court papers unveiled Monday show.
George Papadopoulos, a 2009 DePaul University graduate, pleaded guilty Oct. 5 to lying to the FBI and signaled he is cooperating with investigators as they attempt to unravel the Trump campaign’s dealings with Russia. He has acknowledged that he misled investigators about his dealings with the foreign power, including interactions with an unnamed overseas professor whom he believed to be connected to the Russian government and who told him the Russians had “dirt” on then-candidate Hillary Clinton via “thousands of emails.”
“There’s a large-scale, ongoing investigation of which this case is a small part,” said Aaron Zelinsky of the special counsel’s office at Papadopoulos’ plea hearing.
Papadopoulos, who grew up in suburban Lincolnwood and attended Niles West High School, did postgraduate work in London after earning a political science degree from DePaul, according to his social media accounts. Court records show that he has been given permission to live in Chicago, where he owns a home with his mother and younger brother in the Lincoln Square neighborhood, until his sentencing.
Papadopoulos, who has no prior convictions, was convicted of one count of making false statements. It carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine, according to court documents. However, in the plea deal he cut, it is estimated he would face either no prison time or up to six months in prison and a fine in the range of $500 to $9,500, documents show.
A foreign policy adviser to President Donald Trump’s campaign, Papadopoulos was arrested July 27 after arriving at Dulles International Airport on a flight from Munich, according to federal records. He was charged in a sealed criminal complaint the next day and had an initial court appearance before a magistrate judge in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., though the proceedings were held in a courtroom closed to the public, records show.
At that hearing, Papadopoulos agreed to surrender his passport and not to travel outside the federal court districts in Virginia, Washington, D.C., or Northern Illinois. He was also barred from communicating with “anyone associated with the presidential campaign” or others mentioned in the charges, records show.
Meanwhile, the special counsel’s office at the time sought and received permission from the federal judge overseeing Papadopoulos’ case in D.C. to keep all filings under seal, arguing that any public knowledge of the charges against Papadopoulos would have a chilling effect on the investigation, court records show.
The special counsel’s office also has described him in court documents as a “proactive cooperator,” a legal term used to describe someone who actively helps in a law-enforcement investigation. The three-month gap between his arrest and the government’s unveiling of his plea also suggests that kind of assistance.
“This means he’s not just answering questions and telling the special counsel what went on,” said former federal prosecutor Jeffrey Cramer, who is now managing director for the Berkeley Research Group. “It means he took an affirmative step toward helping the investigation. One way of doing that is to wear a wire.”
Papadopoulos’ Chicago-based attorneys, Thomas Breen and Robert Stanley, declined to comment on the case, saying it was in their client’s best interest to do so.
“We will have the opportunity to comment on George’s involvement when called upon by the Court at a later date,” the attorneys said in a statement. “We look forward to telling all the details of George’s story at that time.”
The public was not allowed in the courtroom when Papadopoulos entered his guilty plea earlier this month. According to a transcript made available Monday, Papadopoulos told the judge he was born in Chicago, has a master’s degree and that he understood he was giving up his trial rights.
“I plead guilty,” Papadopoulos said, according to the transcript.
Toward the end of the 45-minute hearing, Breen told the judge he had no objection to the proceedings remaining under seal, which he said was to his client’s benefit.
“I certainly understand the special prosecutor’s position on this matter, considering the very expansive investigation that’s going forward,” Breen said.
Papadopoulos has been living in a large, remodeled brick bungalow on a secluded block of stately homes in the Lincoln Square neighborhood, according to state records and a neighbor who lives across the street.
He is frequently seen walking his dog, but otherwise mostly keeps to himself, said neighbor Kim Zimmerman, who believes he lives in the home with his mother. Papadopoulos did not attend this year’s block party or mingle much with neighbors, who often commiserate while doing yardwork, she said.
Zimmerman said she last saw Papadopoulos about a week ago. Someone often picked him up, she said, honking the horn of his car to alert Papadopoulos that it was time to leave.
“They are friendly enough,” Zimmerman said. “But I never really had enough encounters to know them at all.”
No one answered the door of the home Monday afternoon.
A conservative think tank researcher, Papadopoulos was living in London in early March 2016 when he agreed to join the Trump campaign as foreign policy adviser, according to court records. Trump, at the time, was competing in hard-fought presidential primaries, including Illinois’ mid-March contest, and had not yet secured the GOP nomination.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders downplayed Papadopoulos’ campaign involvement Monday, calling him a volunteer whose role was “extremely limited.” However, Trump referred to him as an “excellent guy” in a March 2016 interview with the Washington Post and touted his expertise on energy and oil-related issues.
Based on a conversation with a supervisory campaign official after joining Trump’s team, Papadopoulos understood that a principal foreign policy focus of the campaign “was an improved U.S. relationship with Russia,” court documents show.
He met with an unnamed overseas professor for the first time in March 14, 2016, according to court documents. On April 26, 2016, the professor told Papadopoulos about the “thousands of emails” he had that could prove damaging to Clinton, court documents show.
Court records suggest Russia regularly uses nongovernmental agents to achieve its foreign intelligence objectives.
Papadopoulos misled FBI agents about those initial conversations when he was interviewed in Chicago shortly after Trump’s inauguration.
FBI agents first questioned Papadopoulos on Jan. 27, 2017. He spoke with them a second time on Feb. 16, when he promised to cooperate with their investigation.
The next day, according to federal records, Papadopoulos deleted his Facebook account and created a new one in an attempt to delete any information about his Russian contacts. He also switched cellphone numbers a short time later.
In addition to falsely stating that the March meeting took place before he joined the campaign, Papadopoulos told agents the professor was “a nothing” and “just a guy talk(ing) up connections or something,” court documents show.
In truth, Papadopoulos understood the professor had substantial ties to Russian government officials and had met with some of those officials in Moscow just before telling Papadopoulos about the “thousands of emails,” documents show.
He also told federal investigators, according to court documents, that he met an unnamed female Russian national before joining the campaign and their communications consisted of emails such as “Hi, how are you?”
In fact, he met the woman around March 24, 2016, because he believed she had ties to Russian government officials, court records show. Papadopoulos sought to use the woman over a period of months in an effort to arrange a meeting between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, court documents show.
At one point, he thought the woman was Russian President Vladimir Putin’s niece, but she was not, according to federal records.
“Through his false statements and omissions, defendant Papadopoulos 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,” court documents show.
According to the special counsel’s office, Papadopoulos emailed a high-ranking campaign official in May 2016 with the subject line “Request from Russia to meet Mr. Trump.” In the body of the message, he stated that “Russia has been eager to meet Mr. Trump for quite sometime and have been reaching out to me to discuss.”
In later emails, Papadopoulos contacted a “high ranking” campaign official, including correspondence on June 19, 2016, inquiring about setting up a meeting with Russian agents.
“The Russian ministry of foreign affairs messaged and said that if Mr. Trump is unable to make it to Russia, if a campaign rep (me or someone else) can make it for meetings? I am willing to make the trip off the record if it’s in the interest of Mr. Trump and the campaign to meet specific people,” Papadopoulos wrote.
After several weeks of additional communications about a potential “off the record” meeting with Russian officials, the campaign supervisor told Papadopoulos in August 2016 that “I would encourage you” and another foreign policy adviser to the campaign to “make the trip, if it is feasible,” according to court documents.
According to court records, the campaign official forwarded Papadopoulos’s email to another campaign staffer and stated: “Let’s discuss. We need someone 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.”
U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley, a Chicago Democrat and member of the House Intelligence Committee, said Papadopoulos’s plea suggests this is just the beginning.
“When I’m asked, ‘Are you connecting the dots on the investigation,’ I say, ‘Yes.’ But as we do, I’m finding more dots,” Quigley said at an unrelated event with other Democratic members of Congress on the West Side. “I suggest as you follow this … you’re going to have other names pop up that you’ve never heard of before, but they’re going to be critical to the investigation.”
Chicago Tribune’s Marissa Page, Stacy St. Clair and Rick Pearson contributed from Chicago.
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