Papadopoulos role in Trump campaign appears extensive in undisclosed documents: report

Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos appears to have had a larger role in the Trump campaign than campaign officials are willing to admit, according to documents reported Saturday by The New York Times.

Documents obtained by the Times show that Papadopoulos was instrumental in setting up a meeting between then-candidate Donald Trump and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, and coordinated directly with later-ousted White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon in setting up the meeting and arranging talking points.

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Other documents show that Papadopoulos, then a member of the Trump campaign’s fledgling foreign policy team, also met on behalf of the campaign with officials from the Israeli and Australian embassies. At least one conversation with a top Australian diplomat may have led to the FBI investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, the Times reported.

The expanded role described by the documents comes in stark contrast to comments made by other former Trump campaign officials, including Michael Caputo, who in October called Papadopoulos a “coffee boy” who had “nothing to do with the campaign.”

“I mean, you might have called him a foreign policy analyst,” Caputo said.

“But in fact, you know, if he was going to wear a wire, all we’d know now is whether he prefers a caramel macchiato over a regular American coffee in conversations with his barista,” he added.

Papadopoulos’s fiancee has disputed that characterization, saying instead that the former adviser was a high-level official in the campaign, adding he “set up meetings with leaders all over the world.”

“George is a remarkable young man with incredible experience in the field of energy and oil policies. This experience led him to get into the campaign and to advise the president at only 28 years old,” Simona Mangiante said earlier this month.

“He never took any initiative, as far as I know, [that was] unauthorized. All the initiatives had [the] blessing of the campaign,” she added.

Papadopoulos pleaded guilty in October to lying to FBI agents about his conversations with a foreign professor who told him that Russians had thousands of emails containing “dirt” on Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.