Following Monday’s revelation that his campaign adviser George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to federal agents about his contact with Kremlin-linked Russians, President Trump tried to distance himself from Papadopoulos, saying, “Few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar.”
That’s a hard claim to swallow, since Papadopoulos was in regular contact with top campaign officials and met with a number of foreign officials as a Trump surrogate. Trump once called him an “excellent guy.” The Washington Post reports that he even sat next to future attorney general Jeff Sessions at a dinner for campaign advisers weeks before the Republican National Convention.
If Team Trump can’t convince the public that Papadopoulos was a nobody, they’d at least like people to believe that his repeated efforts to set up a meeting between the campaign and the Russian government were rebuffed by more senior Trump officials. For instance, an attorney for Sam Clovis, the campaign’s national co-chairman, suggested he was just “being polite” when he encouraged Papadopoulos to meet with Russian officials, and was actually trying to brush him off.