George Papadopoulos seems to have a big mouth that spews a lot of, um, intelligence when it’s lubricated with liquor.
Who is this guy and what does it mean? According to the New York Times, Papadopoulos is a former low-level Donald Trump presidential campaign aide who, during a drunken bender in London, told the Australian ambassador to Great Britain that Russian government officials had compiled dirt on Hillary Rodham Clinton.
So … its meaning? The young man who served as a foreign policy adviser to the Trump team said enough to alarm the Aussie envoy, who then alerted U.S. government officials. He also triggered the FBI investigation into the “Russia thing” that prompted the president to fire former FBI director James Comey earlier this year.
The revelation has the potential of creating yet another firestorm regarding special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of the Russia collusion allegation. The Department of Justice selected Mueller — also a former FBI director and a highly respected career prosecutor — to lead the probe into whether the Trump team colluded with Russian agents who sought to meddle in the 2016 presidential campaign.
The president keeps insisting there was “no collusion.” He has said Mueller is engaged in a witch hunt, although of late he says he believes Mueller will treat him “fairly.”
My own view is that this one-time low-level underling — Papadopoulos — might have spilled enough of the beans to lure the special counsel’s legal team toward pay dirt.
Bizarre.