Papadopoulos investigated in Mueller probe for acting as unregistered agent of Israel: wife

Special counsel Robert Mueller threatened to charge former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos with acting as an unregistered agent of Israel, Papadopoulos’s wife told The Washington Post.

Simona Mangiante Papadopoulos, who married Papadopoulos in March, said that Mueller’s team had said they possessed evidence that her husband worked for Israel without registering as a foreign agent during his time as an energy consultant before joining the Trump campaign.

George Papadopoulos, who has been cooperating with Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 elections, denied the allegation, his wife told the Post.

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He pleaded guilty in October to lying to the FBI about his communications with Russians and a London professor who had claimed that Moscow had emails related to Hillary Clinton.

His wife told The Daily Caller that Papadopoulos was not involved in Russia’s efforts to meddle in the election and had agreed to plead guilty about his lies to the FBI to avoid charges of being an Israeli government agent.

Earlier in the year, Simona Papadopoulos had said that her husband would be remembered like John Dean, the former White House counsel who was the first to plead guilty to being involved in the Watergate cover-up but then became a witness against former President Nixon’s aides.

On Tuesday, she said that her earlier comments were misrepresented and noted that she and her husband viewed his role differently after his contact with the Russians led the FBI to look into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.

She added that she thinks Papadopoulos deserves a pardon from Trump, who recently said he had the power to pardon himself, the Post reported.

Papadopoulos is “a victim, honestly,” she said. “He made a mistake. He pleaded guilty for that mistake. It would make sense for the president to pardon him.”