President Trump’s former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos is considering withdrawing his plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller, his wife said Monday.
Simona Mangiante Papadopoulos said her husband will soon decide whether to reverse course and abandon the guilty plea he entered last October in connection with lying to FBI agents investigating alleged Russia interference during the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
“He will make his final decision tomorrow,” she told ABC News in an interview. “He needs a serious conversation with his attorney.”
“We are discussing now the possibility and the technicalities behind this possibility with lawyers,” Mrs. Papadopoulos told Fox News host Sean Hannity later Monday, The Washington Examiner reported. “We have important meetings tomorrow.”
A spokesman for the special counsel’s office declined to comment when reached by The Washington Times early Tuesday.
Mr. Papadopoulos, 31, pleaded guilty last October to one count of making false statements and is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 7.
Federal prosecutors wrote in court filings that Mr. Papadopoulos repeatedly misled FBI agents about his contacts with Russians and Russian intermediaries during the presidential campaign, including his conversations with a London-based professor who told him in early 2016 that Russians had obtained “dirt” on Mr. Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton.
In a pre-sentencing document filed Friday, the special counsel wrote that a punishment of six months imprisonment for Mr. Papadopoulos was “appropriate and warranted.”
“The defendant’s crime was serious and caused damage to the government’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election,” Mr. Mueller wrote Friday.
“The sentence imposed here should reflect the fact that lying to federal investigators has real consequences, especially where the defendant lied to investigators about critical facts, in an investigation of national importance, after having been explicitly warned that lying to the FBI was a federal offense. The nature and circumstances of the offense warrant a sentence of incarceration,” Mr. Mueller wrote.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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