EXCLUSIVE: Former Trump campaign foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos told Fox News Digital that the trial of Russian national Igor Danchenko is serving as a venue for Special Counsel John Durham to lay out the facts about the origins of the Trump-Russia probe and give the American people an “intimate vantage point into the onion of corruption” at the FBI.
Durham charged Danchenko, the Russian national who served as the primary sub-source for Christopher Steele and the anti-Trump dossier, with five counts of making false statements to the bureau. He has pleaded not guilty.
FBI supervisory counterintelligence analyst Brian Auten was the first witness on the stand Tuesday, and he testified that the FBI considered submitting Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) applications against Papadopoulos, but ultimately did not do so.
In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, Papadopoulos said he was “not surprised” to hear Auten’s testimony. He said he suspected as early as 2018 that he was being surveilled in some way by authorities based on the “intrusive nature of how the FBI was questioning” him.
In this Oct. 25, 2018, file photo, George Papadopoulos, the former Trump campaign adviser who triggered the Russia investigation, arrives for his first appearance before congressional investigators, on Capitol Hill in Washington. On Tuesday, Dec. 22, 2020, President Trump pardoned 15 people, including Papadopoulos, his 2016 former campaign adviser whose conversation unwittingly helped trigger the Russia investigation that shadowed Trump’s presidency for nearly two years.
(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
“Unless there was some sort of incredibly scrupulous investigation into my background, my life, my personal life, my work history, they would have had to have used some sort of intrusive measure,” Papadopoulos said. “At that time, the FISA warrants was the one method that everybody was talking about.”
The FBI used the dossier – which was authored by Steele, commissioned by opposition research firm Fusion GPS and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee through law firm Perkins Coie – to serve as the basis for a FISA warrant and three subsequent renewals to monitor former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
Auten testified this week that neither the FBI, nor any other U.S. intelligence agency or even Steele himself, had corroboration for the salacious allegations contained in the dossier against former President Trump and members of his 2016 campaign. Auten testified that the FBI even offered Steele $1 million in 2021 to corroborate the allegations, but said Steele could not do so.
Reacting to the ongoing Danchenko trial and the trial of former Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann, who was found not guilty in June, Papadopoulos told Fox News Digital that these trials are giving people insight into how the FBI works.
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Former Trump adviser Carter Page.
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
“What’s more important than even these prosecutions is allowing the American people to have an intimate vantage point into this onion of corruption that really permeated the American government in 2015 and 2016 and affected a presidency, and how and why it was allowed to take foot,” Papadopoulos said. He said the effort will also help Americans understand “who was behind it.”
“I think that’s what Durham is presenting to the American public,” Papadopoulos said. “He’s basically showing that the FBI had Danchenko on the payroll, and basically was allowing an FBI informant to lie to them in order to continue to frame Trump.”
“These tertiary situations that Durham is talking about related to me, I think it is exactly what I mentioned — it is part of showing this picture to the American public of exactly how corrupt the FBI was under James Comey,” he said.
“The FBI went to any extent possible to trample on people’s rights in order to frame Trump and his campaign and then eventually cripple his presidency, and that’s really what this was all about, and what I think Durham is going to showcase in this trial,” Papadopoulos added.
Former FBI Director James Comey, with his attorney, David Kelley, right, speaks to reporters after a day of testimony before the House Judiciary and Oversight committees, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Friday, Dec. 7, 2018.
(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
In March 2016, as an aide to the Trump campaign focusing on foreign policy, Papadopoulos met with Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud in London who told him that the Russians had dirt in the form of emails that could damage Clinton’s presidential campaign.
Papadopoulos then told Australian diplomat Alexander Downer of the new information, and Downer reported Papadopoulos’ comments to the FBI.
Papadopoulos was charged in former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation with making a false statement to the FBI. The charging document said the false statement was about the timing of his meeting with Mifsud and about his knowledge of Mifsud’s connections to Russia. The charging document also claimed that he “impeded” the investigation by making his false statement.
In this June 21, 2017, file photo, special counsel Robert Mueller departs after a meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington.
(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
Papadopoulos did not meet with only Mifsud and Downer while overseas. He met with Cambridge professor and longtime FBI informant Stefan Halper and his female associate, who went under the alias Azra Turk. Papadopoulos told Fox News that he saw Turk three times in London: once over drinks, once over dinner and once with Halper.
In 2019, Papadopoulos told Fox News that he always suspected he was being recorded, though it is unclear which of those people, if any, may have recorded their conversations. Papadopoulos’ meetings overseas resurfaced in 2019 as part of Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe, sources told Fox News at the time.
Fox News reported in 2019 that Durham’s review was zeroing in on transcripts of recordings made by at least one FBI confidential human source who met with Papadopoulos overseas in 2016, and was specifically looking at why certain “exculpatory” material from them was not presented in subsequent applications for FISA warrants against Trump campaign aide Page.
In 2019, a source told Fox News that the “exculpatory evidence” that could be included in those transcripts, which were declassified and released in April 2020, was Papadopoulos denying having any contact with the Russians to obtain the supposed “dirt” on Clinton.
The jury found that Special Counsel John Durham’s team had not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Sussmann’s statement was a lie.
(REUTERS/Julia Nikhinson)
Fox News obtained the declassified transcript of the secretly recorded meeting in April 2020. The transcript revealed the confidential human source pressed Papadopoulos on whether the Trump campaign was involved in Russian election meddling — something Papadopoulos emphatically denied.
The transcript details a more than four-hour long conversation between Papadopoulos and a confidential human source for the FBI on Oct. 31, 2016. According to the obtained transcripts, the confidential source met with Papadopoulos and asked whether he thought Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee ahead of the Democratic National Convention.
“No,” Papadopoulos replied.
The comments made by Papadopoulos were noteworthy because, according to officials, they were never provided or included in evidence to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court when seeking warrants and warrant renewals to surveil Page over suspicion of Trump campaign ties to Russia.
A Justice Department official in April 2020 confirmed the authenticity of the transcripts. At the time, the official told Fox News the transcript was just one of a series of productions that the Justice Department made in the wake of DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on his review of misconduct of the FISA.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz looks on as he testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on “Examining the Inspector General’s First Report on Justice Department and FBI Actions in Advance of the 2016 Presidential Election” in the Hart Senate Office Building on June 18, 2018 on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.
(Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)
Horowitz wrote in his report, released in December 2019, that “the FBI did not inform of these conversations at the time they occurred” and the “FISA renewal applications on Carter Page did not include these statements.”
The transcripts had been classified, but were declassified under former President Trump’s May 2019 move to approve declassification of documents related to the surveillance of his campaign during the 2016 election.
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Papadopoulos told Fox News Digital that he feels “vindication” as the facts about the original Trump-Russia probe become public.
“Comey, the FBI and the Mueller team wanted to make me a fall guy — just essentially, a coup attempt, I mean, I really had the entire world against me at that point,” Papadopoulos said, noting he “couldn’t fight back legally.”
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“But I knew the facts would come out and the facts are supporting my narrative — they’re supporting the truth,” he said. “And that’s all I’ve ever wanted was just the truth to come out so that America could move forward and forget this very dark chapter, and hold those who did this to the American people accountable and assure that it never happens again in our republic.”
He added, “That’s truly what I’m all about and just want to make sure the country never has to go through this situation again.”
