George Papadopoulos, the former foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign who was sentenced to two weeks in jail last week for lying to the FBI, said his testimony to special counsel Robert Mueller’s team could help prove collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia.
“All I can say is my testimony might have helped move something towards that,” Papadopoulos told ABC News today.
He declined to speak about it more, saying there was an ongoing investigation.
“I can’t really get into details about what I discussed with the special counsel because there’s still an ongoing investigation, of course. I can just speak for myself and my verdict I think speaks volumes of how I was involved at this time,” Papadopoulos said.
In his interview with ABC, Papadopoulos detailed his work on the Trump campaign, including a proposed meeting between the then-presidential candidate and Russian President Vladimir Putin and his contact with a professor who claimed to have knowledge of Hillary Clinton’s hacked emails before that news became public.
Papadopoulos detailed how then-Senator Jeff Sessions was enthusiastic about pursuing a meeting between Trump and Putin during the campaign – which is in direct contrast to what Sessions later told Congress.
“My recollection differs from Sen. Sessions,” said Papadopoulos.
Papadopoulos says he suggested the meeting between Trump and Putin at a campaign gathering on March 31, 2016 and that the then-presidential candidate seemed interested but appeared to defer to Sessions’ opinion.
Sessions, who as a senator was one of Trump’s earliest supporters on Capitol Hill and now serves as attorney general, later told Congress he pushed back on the proposal at that meeting.
But Papadopoulos has a different recollection, saying Trump nodded his head to suggest he was open to the idea but then turned to Sessions.
He also talked about his contact with Joseph Mifsud, a U.K. professor peddling dirt from Russian officials about Clinton.
On Friday, lawyers for the Democratic National Committee suggested Mifsud may be dead.
The DNC, which is suing Russia, the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks for interfering in the 2016 election, said in a court filing Friday that it believes all the defendants in the case have been served ‘with the exception of Mifsud (who is missing and may be deceased).’ The lawyers didn’t elaborate.
Papadopoulos told ABC after that Trump campaign meeting in March, he sought to use his connection to Mifsud to arrange a Trump-Putin sit down.