Ex-Trump campaign adviser loses bid to delay prison sentence

WASHINGTON, DC (AP) — A United States judge has rejected a bid by former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos to delay his two-week prison term, and said Papadopoulos must surrender Monday as scheduled.

Papadopoulos had sought the delay until an appeals court rules in a separate case challenging the constitutionality of special counsel Robert Mueller’s appointment.

But in an order Sunday, US District Court Judge Randy Moss said Papadopoulos’ arguments failed to justify a delay.

Papadopoulos pleaded guilty last year to lying to federal agents about his interactions with Russian intermediaries during the 2016 presidential campaign. He also forfeited most of his rights to contest his conviction.

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His lawyer argued that the appellate case could constitute new evidence that could allow him to mount a challenge.

Papadopoulos, the first campaign aide sentenced in Mueller’s ongoing Russia investigation, said at the time that he was “deeply embarrassed and ashamed” for his actions.

The punishment was far less than the maximum six-month sentence sought by the government, but also more than the probation that Papadopoulos and his lawyers had asked for.

Papadopoulos, who served as a foreign policy adviser to US President Donald Trump’s campaign, has been a central figure in the Russia investigation dating back before Mueller’s May 2017 appointment. He was the first to plead guilty in Mueller’s probe and the first Trump campaign adviser to be sentenced. His case was also the first to detail a member of the Trump campaign having knowledge of Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election while it was ongoing.

Memos authored by House Republicans and Democrats, now declassified, also show that information about Papadopoulos’ contacts with Russian intermediaries triggered the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation in July 2016 into potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. That probe was later taken over by Mueller.

According to a sweeping indictment handed up this summer, Russian intelligence had stolen emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign and other Democratic groups by April 2016, the same month Papadopoulos was told by a professor that Russian officials had told him they had “dirt” on Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.”

Papadopoulos later used his connections with the Maltese professor, Joseph Mifsud, and other Russian nationals in an attempt to broker a meeting between then-candidate Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

He admitted last year to lying to the FBI about those contacts. In court papers filed ahead of the sentencing, prosecutors say those lies caused irreparable harm to the investigation during its early months.

Prosecutors wrote that those false statements, made during a January 2017 interview with federal investigators, caused the FBI to miss an opportunity to interview Mifsud while he was in the United States.

“The defendant’s lies undermined investigators’ ability to challenge the professor or potentially detain or arrest him while he was still in the United States,” they wrote, noting that Mifsud left the US in February 2017 and has not returned.

Even after his arrest and plea agreement last year, prosecutors say Papadopoulos continued to be difficult with investigators, only providing information after being confronted with documents such as emails and text messages.