“If it’s what you say I love it” – Don Jr., gleefully accepting Russian dirt after George Papadopoulos had been told Russia would release emails to help the campaign
HPSCI just released the Schiff memo responding to the Nunes memo. Mostly, it’s underwhelming.
But there is one piece of important news. The memo provides more details about what George Papadopoulos told Australian Ambassador, Alexander Downer, about the Russian outreach via Joseph Mifsud. That passage reads:
George Papadopoulos revealed [redacted] that individuals linked to Russia, who took interest in Papadopoulos as a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, informed him in late April 2016 that Russia [two lines redacted]. Papadopoulos’s disclosure, moreover, occurred against the backdrop of Russia’s aggressive covert campaign to influence our elections, which the FBI was already monitoring. We would later learn in Papadopoulos’s plea that the information the Russians could assist by anonymously releasing were thousands of Hillary Clinton emails.
While the description of what Papadopoulos said is redacted, the context makes it clear (as does this Adam Schiff tweet) that Papadopoulos didn’t tell Downer specifically what Russia had told him was available, only that they could release it to help Trump.
But that Mifsud told Papadopoulos that the Russians were thinking of releasing it to help Trump is news, important news. It means the discussions of setting up increasingly senior levels of meetings between Russia and the Trump campaign took place against the offer of help in the form of released kompromat.
Which, particularly given the evidence that Papadopoulos shared that information with the campaign, makes the June 9 meeting still more damning.