Former Trump campaign adviser denied campaign was involved in DNC hack in recorded conversation

Catherine Herridge|CBS:

In late October 2016, less than two weeks before the presidential election, a former adviser to then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, George Papadopoulos, denied to an FBI confidential source that the campaign was involved in the circumstances surrounding the hack of the Democratic National Committee’s email system, calling the idea “illegal.” 

CBS News has now reviewed the transcript of the conversation between Papadopoulos and the confidential source working for the FBI, and has published key excerpts below. 

The recorded conversation between Papadopoulos and the confidential source working for the FBI was documented in the December report issued by Justice Department Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz into the FBI’s surveillance of campaign aide Carter Page and other actions related to the FBI probe known as “Crossfire Hurricane.” But the excerpts of the transcript published here provide new details about the interaction between Papadopoulos and the FBI source in the final days of the presidential campaign.

His conversation with an Australian diplomat in May 2016, in which he said that Russia had political dirt on Mr. Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton, spawned the two-year Russia investigation. Papadopoulos, among the first Trump campaign associates to face criminal charges related to the Russia investigation, served a brief prison sentence for lying to the FBI about his contacts with foreign nationals during the campaign.

The failure by government investigators to include key sections of the Papadopoulos transcripts in the warrants, including denials the campaign “was collaborating with Russia or with outside groups like Wikileaks,” to surveil Page was listed among the 17 inaccuracies and omissions documented by Horowitz in his December report. He described the omission this way: “Papadopoulos’s statement to an FBI CHS (confidential human source) in late October 2016 denying that the Trump campaign was involved in the circumstances of the DNC hack.” read more