Yesterday the President of the United States pardoned, among others, the first Trump campaign member to plead "guilty" in the Mueller Russia investigation: George Papadopoulos. From 2016 onwards, the most powerful figures in the most powerful surveillance agencies on earth dedicated themselves to subverting, first, the ruling party's principal political opponent and, then, the duly elected head of government and his administration. None of them will pay a price; some of them are still in power, and some of them will return to power in the weeks ahead.
Meanwhile, a presidential candidate compromised by a Chinese honey trap continues to sit on the House Intelligence Committee - and America's "newspaper of record" has made not a single mention of the story. Trump has failed to drain the swamp, and the swamp has come roaring back swampier than ever to swamp even the most basic definition of a free society: a fair election.
I became interested in George Papadopoulos after watching multiple three-minute telly hits with him and always wanting to know more. So I figured, after a year or more of waiting, that I might as well interview him myself. We're re-running this two-part interview today to mark his pardon - a pardon that should never have been necessary if this country had a real federal "justice" system.
There were two reasons I was intrigued - first of all, because (as I've written before) young Papadopoulos seemed to me to be obviously the "mark" of multiple high-level well-connected figures from America, Britain, Italy, Australia and elsewhere, but also because several of those persons such as Boris Johnson and Alexander Downer were known to me personally. George Papadopoulos eventually set down his account of what happened these last five years of his life in his book called Deep State Target.
As you'll hear, Papadopoulos and his wife paid a huge personal price for the Deep State's need to make an example of him. We begin where George's story begins - with a young Beltway think-tank wonk watching an unlikely presidential candidate descend an elevator in a Fifth Avenue skyscraper. Click below to watch:
In Part Two those seeking to entrap a junior Trump campaign staffer go through every dangle in the book from lots of cash to exotic honeypots. Then comes Robert Mueller, and prison - and the terrible personal cost to George and his wife, as, following an aggressive FBI interrogation, she loses their unborn child:
If you want to know more about how "Crossfire Hurricane" got cooked up, George's book is available at Amazon.
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11 Member Comments
Timely replay of your excellent long-form interview with Mr. Papadopoulos. Great job! Prior to seeing your interview I had seen him in a couple short TV interviews, and read Andrew McCarthy's Ball of Collusion. So I had a somewhat inaccurate and very incomplete picture of him. After seeing your interview, I read Deep State Target, and was surprised at how well written the book was. It clearly and shockingly presents the complex and widespread effort to entrap Mr. Papadopoulos and destroy the Trump campaign and presidency. I am very glad he was pardoned.
This is one of the most insightful, informative interviews I have ever seen
Thanks Mark for continuing to highlight the ridiculous actions of The U.S. "Justice" Department in the course of and aftermath of the so called Mueller investigation. All I can take issue with from the interview is Mr. Papadopoulos' choice of footwear. If he's guilty of anything it's that style faux paux! That aside, a man who was supposedly a threat to U.S. national security received a prison sentence commensurate with disorderly conduct or leaving the scene of an accident. That fact lays bare the ridiculousness of the entire process and the one-sided nature of these "investigations". The whole thing was merely an exercise in intimidation in the hopes that someone, anyone, would agree to spill on (as in make up) Trump's alleged dirty dealings with the Russians leading up to the 2016 election. The whole Mueller charade is a stain on our nation, which unfortunately has been surpassed by the 2020 election charade. Heaven help us (because Mitch and Co. certainly won't).
One hand of the Deep State dangled a dollybird in front of Papadopoulos (left dangling), while the other hand dope-slapped him for "lying" to investigators who knew just the questions to entrap him into "lying". While, as you point out, Mark, Eric Swalwell, who spilled his seedy soul to a ChiCom hot pork bun, still sits pretty (or as pretty as his vapid puss can muster) on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Why even pretend this is fair? The game is rigged. Let's take our ball and go...nowhere.
Debbie Dingle (Dunce-MI) says that Eric didn't have a deep relationship with Fang Fang.
Cue the double entendres.
I didn't know anything about the the PapaD incident so watched this interview. I am glad Trump pardoned him, noone deserves punishment for the ridiculous process crimes.
But the more I watched this interview the more just didn't make sense....first, while we talk about them all the time, what even is a think tank? Sort of like what is a neighborhood organizer? PapaD is an energy sector expert of some sort who spent his entire short career working for a think tank (2011-2015, so age 23-27)...it actually sounded like he was in some kind of shady espionage or gov't dealing between Cyprus and Israel, always hush-hush yet in demand, always needing to make gov't contacts...I watched and watched but could not ever figure out what his job was. And he goes to work for that Law company in London, where he admits he doesn't know what the company does, what he was doing there, he knew his boss obviously lied to him about the Putin niece, he was given a meaningless director job immediately, he has shady meeting after shady meeting that he keeps having his doubts about but keeps attending nonetheless while working for a presidential campaign, he has embassy officials spending $1,000 on wining and dining him and yet he keeps meeting these types of people....this story does not add up, that is the one and only take-away I have from this interview of a massively confusing topic. Sorry.
Also, hilariously, like the old saw you cracked years ago about one Idaho feed store clerk supporting all of America, is everybody in Europe working for gov'ts, CIA, MI5, embassies, FBI? How many spooks does it take to infiltrate a presidential campaign anyway?
Papodopoulos and Svetlana Lakhova are best explained as collateral damage. As such, their tribulations, financial ruin, and imprisonment (Papadopoulos and potentially Flynn) are perfectly acceptable to deep swampers in pursuit of the real target, President Trump. The fascinating thing is the time line of the project to entrap Papadopoulos and to compromise General Flynn. The current narrative is that the abuse of the FBI started in August of 2016, but the campaign began long before that with the various directorships offered to Papadopoulos in 2015 after Trump declared his candidacy.
The common denominator between Papadopoulos and Lakhova appears to be Stefan Halper, who was funded by a $700,000 grant from the DIA (see Lakhova's court documents.) Halper had a fascinating interview with Steven Schrage, who was apparently considering working with Flynn, on Jan. 10, 2017 in which Halper said: "If you go in the NSC, you have to consider very carefully if you feel it's appropriate for you to work for Flynn [crosstalk]. I don't think Flynn's going to be around long. I mean, that's just my guess, but the way these things work, you inevitably find yourself at odds with someone—I mean, you always do, probably lots of people—and when your opponents, so-called enemies, when people oppose you are looking for ways of exerting pressure, they go to people they know you're at odds with.
"And that's how it builds and then eventually you get squeezed pretty hard. ... But Flynn's reaction to that is to blow up and get angry. He's really [expletive], I mean [crosstalk], I don't know where he goes from there, but that is his reaction. That's why he's so unsuitable."
So Halper knew that the game was played with leaks and behind the scene PR campaigns, and Flynn just wasn't the right sort of chap to tolerate being abused this way. Not mentioned was Halper's role in constructing these damaging PR campaigns.
Due to the ChiCom-19 emergency, The Shining City on The Hill is closed for repairs.
I long ago wrote off Carter Page as a run-of-the-mill plant. He has more degrees than the Harvard faculty, yet on Fox News he plays a doofus. I think not.
PapaD is far more intriguing. He has the babe lost in the woods quality that makes it almost believable. To this day, it seems his ego and his ingenuousness won't permit him to see the absurdity of what he fell for (but the ingenue must be guileless, right?). On the other hand, his swarthy looks and his curiously Slavic Italian wife make them ideal to star in the next stab at Boris and Natasha (with Comey as Bullwinkle, and Adam Schiff as a flying squirrel).
Too bad some TV "news" magazine show like "60 Minutes" doesn't take this interview and broadcast it. I don't personally know anyone who has ever heard of George Popadopoulos. When Mark first posted this interview, I told a few people about it and the reaction was always something along the lines that Popadopouls was found guilty, sent to jail and now he's trying to back-pedal and save whatever's left of his reputation. They never bothered to watch it. Now, Mr. Popadopoulos is back in the news because of Trump issuing him a pardon. This week I've heard a few people asking about Popadopoulos wondering why it's such a newsworthy thing. They are asking why Trump pardoned him. They don't know the story. I've steered them to this website and said they can learn all about it watching this excellent interview. Thank you Mark for re-posting it. If the public is generally okay with the behavior of our own FBI, CIA and "judicial" system then they deserve everything they have coming to them and more.
Robert, I've had the same experience talking with some folks I know (nice, intelligent people at that). Among other things, they are unaware of the blatant illegality involved in the FBI's framing of General Flynn. I don't understand how people can be so blind to what has been going on in our government, and the danger it poses to all of us. On a related note — as of yesterday, the New York Times had yet to run a story on the Swalwell-Fang Fang Affair. I guess that explains a lot, since most lesser and local news outlets parrot what the NYT and Wapo publish.