As it turns out, conspiracy theories won’t keep you out of prison — someone should let President Donald Trump know. His former adviser George Papadopoulos has been ordered to begin his two week prison sentence as scheduled on Monday, failing in his efforts to delay its start while he challenges Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s authority.
He’s hardly alone in his efforts to challenge the special counsel, a push led in large part by the president himself, who’s frantically dismissed the entirety of the investigation as illegitimate for months while simultaneously gunning for the public to believe that he’s completely innocent.
Still, no matter how many interests he’s got on his side, his efforts haven’t got anywhere. D.C. Federal Judge Randy Moss noted that as part of a plea agreement Papadopoulos struck with Mueller, he had missed the opportunity to file the appeals of his sentence that his team has pushed.
Papadopoulos originally pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about his interactions with the Russian Professor Joseph Mifsud, who brought him information about the infamous Kremlin theft of caches of emails from the Democrats during the lead-up to the 2016 U.S. elections.
Concurrent to his talk with Mifsud, Papadopoulos brought the Trump campaign a proposal for then-candidate Trump to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin himself, which never materialized but constitutes yet another Trump campaign connection to Russia the president’s associates had previously hidden.
The now fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who’d previously served as a Trump campaign adviser, supported the meeting proposal, Papadopoulos has claimed. Although Sessions asserted otherwise, he’s hardly established himself as trustworthy, initially ignoring the proposal altogether during questioning about Trump connections to Russia.
The meeting proposal was hardly alone among attempted and completed Trump/Putin contacts. Putin associate Alexander Torshin, for instance, used his connection to the National Rifle Association to attempt to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin. He only ever got as far as himself briefly interacting with Donald Trump Jr.
The flimsy tower came tumbling down in part after Papadopoulos spilled secrets about Russian dirt on Hillary Clinton to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer in London. In the time since his sentencing, despite the apologetic tone he presented in court, Papadopoulos has asserted that meeting was a set-up, although there are zero pieces of evidence to that effect.
After Downer notified American authorities of the suspicious comments he’d heard, the Russia investigation got underway. In its course, three people including Papadopoulos have so far been sentenced to jail; the others include Dutch lawyer Alex Van Der Zwaan, who also lied to authorities, and California man Richard Pinedo, who sold fake identities to Russians that helped them in their misinformation campaign.
Former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, meanwhile, is set to be sentenced December 18. He also struck a deal wherein he pleaded guilty to lying to authorities and offered cooperation in exchange for leniency.
Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort — who was declared guilty of some financial fraud charges and pleaded guilty to other political conspiracy oriented ones — will be sentenced in February.
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