Former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos pleads guilty to lying to FBI agents in Mueller probe

[Dr. Jack]

29. Interesting detail from the government documents on this

This was mentioned in 538's live chat on the matter

There are also some small details in the charge that come into brighter focus in the context of other reporting on Papadopoulos. One breadcrumb stands out:

In May 2016, Papadopoulos emailed a “high-ranking campaign official” (Manafort) writing: “Russia has been eager to meet Mr. Trump for quite sometime and has been reaching out to me to discuss.” In a footnote, the government added that the campaign official forwarded the email to another official (Rick Gates, without cc’ing Papadopoulos) and added, “Let[‘]s discuss. We need someone to communicate that DT is not doing these trips. It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal.”

It’s not clear what “someone low level” was meant to do. It could simply be that the person was being delegated to give Papadopoulos the brush-off. But the fact that the other two people on the email thread were also indicted today — and that Papadopoulos is now in a position to explain the context of all of the exchanges cited in the charge to Mueller’s team — isn’t good news for Trump or the people in his orbit.