George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and will serve 14 days' time, is going to meet with lawmakers behind closed doors Thursday, offering information to the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform committees.
The two GOP-led committees are investigating the FBI and the Justice Department in a thinly veiled effort to undermine the special counsel's Russia investigation.
Papadopoulos emerged as a key figure in the federal counterintelligence investigation into Russian election interference after he told a top Australian diplomat during the 2016 race that the Russians had dirt on Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign in the form of thousands of emails — a statement he made before WikiLeaks began releasing hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee. He’d learned the information from Joseph Misfud, a Kremlin-linked professor who took an interest in the young foreign policy adviser.
The Australians later alerted their American counterparts — a tip that the FBI used to open what is now the investigation into Russia's election interference.
While Papadopoulos cooperated with prosecutors, special counsel Robert Mueller's team has indicated that Papadopoulos did it begrudgingly and that the help they received from him was not substantial.
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Following his sentencing, Papadopoulos told CNN that he has “no recollection” of sharing information about emails possessed by the Russians to other members of the Trump campaign, but couldn’t “guarantee” it.
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Since his sentencing, Papadopoulos has made frequent television appearances and has been outspoken on Twitter about his views of events during the 2016 campaign — a drastic difference compared to the quiet approach assumed by the other cooperators in Mueller’s probe.
He has gone from being disavowed by members of the Trump campaign to a frequent guest on Fox News opinion shows hosted by Sean Hannity and Jesse Watters, pushing conspiracy theories that the the United Kingdom and Australia targeted him as part of an effort to “sabotage” Trump’s campaign.
He has claimed the two U.S. allies colluded with the Obama administration to “fabricate collusion and crimes” — a tweet that received the equivalent of an eye-roll from former national security officials on Twitter.
He has also claimed that Misfud was a British agent rather than a Russian one.
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The interview is slated to take place one day after the chairmen and ranking members of the two committees interview Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein behind closed doors about his decisionmaking before and after the 2016 election as it relates to the Russia probe.
Papadopoulos set to testify before House lawmakers (The Hill)