Headline is misleading. OSC has a deal with Papado and they said âimprisonment is warrantedâ. They did not argue that he broke the plea deal but that he was uncooperative. Sec. 7 of his agreement states that the Judge is not bound by the deal. Nearly every statement in this sentencing memo is aimed at telling the Judge that he should feel free to ignore the plea deal and impose his own sentence within the statutory guidelines (up to 5 years).
If Papadopoulosâs lies resulted in the Special Counsel missing an opportunity to properly interview Mifsud before he fled the country never to be seen again, Iâd say thatâs pretty damn egregious worth much more than six months in prison. And his -and especially his wifeâs -insolence after the fact should also be taken into account.
Reposting from another thread:
For anyone who thought Mueller has been sitting on his hands waiting for the jury in the EDVA trial of Paul Manafort, think again.
Mueller submitted a sentencing memorandum for George Papadopoulos. He will be sentenced on September 7, 2018. Mueller has not stated an actual sentencing, leaving it up to the judge, but that âa sentence of incarceration, within the applicable Guidelines range of of 0 to 6 monthsâ imprisonment, is appropriate and warranted.â However, the tone and tenor of the rest of the memo is a big hint to the judge (Randolph Moss, I believe) that he can feel free to impose his own sentence based on the crime to which he pleaded guilty.
In light of the defendantâs conduct and the lack of mitigating circumstances, the principles of sentencing set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 3553(a) call for a period of incarceration.
The memo provides a recap of Papadoâs crimes. He pleaded guilty to making false statements under 18 USC 1001(a). The maximum sentence for this crime is up to 5 years (8 years in terrorism and other special cases). The govât states,
The defendantâs crime was serious and caused damage to the governmentâs investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The defendant lied in order to conceal his contacts with Russians and Russian intermediaries during the campaign and made his false statements to investigators on January 27, 2017, early in the investigation, when key investigative decisions, including who to interview and when, were being made.
After this introduction, Mueller then appears to unload on Papadopoulos as a cantankerous, deceptive, mendacious piece of s**t who cost the government a real shot at nabbing a key witness, Josef Mifsud.
Offense Conduct
Under the section entitled, âOffense Conductâ the government notes the following factors to consider for sentencing. Letâs just say that Papado doesnât come off well here:
- Papado chose to do a voluntary interview on 1/27/17 and then lied to them for over 2 hours. He did so despite being warned that is a crime to lie to the FBI. The FBI informed Papado that need was investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and any connections between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.
Iâm a bit surprised that the FBI actually told Papado this up front. Comey didnât tell the world about this investigation until 2 months later. What did Papado do with the information that the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign? Was he directed to tell the Russians? Mariia Butina was in town.
Did he tell the Israelis with whom he appears to have been acquainted? Did he tell ex-Israeli Intel like the Black Cube folks, some of whom are closer to Netanyahu than actual Israeli intel (who oppose him on some key positions on Iran and his treatment of the Obama Administration)? He mightâve told the Trump folks but he was also angling for a job so I have the sense that he kept his mouth shut on that piece of it. But is there a close US friend who worked with him on the campaign or someone else to whom he confided? Iâd really like to know who, outside the FBI, knew about the Comey led investigation before Comey made it public.
- Papado lied about his contacts with Russians and Russian intermediaries during the course of the campaign to minimize his own role and the extent of the campaignâs knowledge of his contacts.
The memo recounts how Papado met Professor Josef Mifsud, a female Russian national and a Russian connected to the RU Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It tells how Mifsud told Papado that the Russians had dirt on HRC in the form of thousands of emails. The group of 3 had several communications over a period of months to arrange a meeting between the Russians and the Trump campaign. On all of these points, Papado lied about the timing, extent and nature of communications and contacts.
The FBI appears to have confronted Papado with emails and intercepted communications to prove the dates of communication with Mifsud and others as having taken place after he had accepted an offer to join the Trump campaign.
- Papadopoulosâ lies were deliberate and repeated. Here, Mueller gets more explicit with quotes of responses from Papado, âprior to even talking to anybody on Trumpâ; ânothing to do with Trumpâ; âthis was before I even got with Trumpâ; âI wasnât even on the orbit of Trump at the timeâ.
Here, it is striking the extent to which Papado is trying to protect the Trump Campaign, and Trump specifically. His strategy was to say that he met these people but before he joined Trump and it had nothing to do with Trump. In a sense, by telling him clearly what the investigation was about, Papadopoulos developed a strategy to essentially obstruct investigators from finding out material facts about the Trump campaignâs involvement with Russians. He thought that if he could place the timeline of these communications as pre-Trump then he would take the risk to see if the FBI would prosecute for seemingly incidental contacts.
- Papado retained counsel, spoke with the FBI in Feb 2017 but did not correct the record. Instead, he tried to cover his online tracks. Finally, the big whopper of them all, Papadoâs lies impeded the investigation by hindering the FBIâs ability to question Mifsud.
Most immediately, those statements substantially hindered investigatorsâ ability to effectively question the Professor when the FBI located him in Washington, D.C. approximately two weeks after the defendantâs January 27, 2017 interview. The defendantâs lies undermined investigatorsâ ability to challenge the Professor or potentially detain or arrest him while he was still in the United States. The government understands that the Professor left the United States on February 11, 2017 and he has not returned to the United States since then.
So Josef Mifsud was in the United States in early February 2017? Was he in the US for the inauguration? Did he meet other Russian spies like Mariia Butina? Did Papado meet with Mifsud or other Russian handlers? Several Russians, including Butina and Alexander Torshin, were in DC a week earlier to attend the National Prayer Breakfast and were at a dinner with Dana Rohrabacher. Did the knowledge that the FBI had met with Papadopoulos on Jan 27 reach the Russians?
Had the defendant told the FBI the truth when he was interviewed in January 2017, the FBI could have quickly taken numerous investigative steps to help determine, for example, how and where the Professor obtained the information, why the Professor provided the information to the defendant, and what the defendant did with the information after receiving it.
It would appear from the Special Counselâs memo that Papadopoulos ran enough cover to give Mifsud an opportunity to evade the FBI. There is a hint of a suggestion that they did locate and possibly speak with Mifsud, but that they were armed with incorrect information from Papadopoulos and could not effectively question him or develop sufficient probable cause to detain him. This to me is pretty damning, and I wonder if this paragraph was put in this memo to alert the Judge that he should feel free to consider a sentence that is higher than the Guideline because of the seriousness of the Russian attack on the US and his unwillingness to help investigators.
Over this same time period, Papadopoulos was angling for a job with the national security council (Flynn was being investigated over this same time), the State Department and the Energy Department.
Efforts to Cooperate
The OSC unloads on Papadopoulos again by stating that he did not provide âsubstantial assistanceâ and that much of the information provided came only after the government confronted him with his own communications, web searches and other information it obtained via subpoena. The OSC obtained a additional cell phone used by Papadopoulos when he was in London during the course of the campaign to communicate with Professor Mifsud.
They canceled a meeting with Papadopoulos in late December 2017 after learning that he did a media interview and it would appear that the subsequent interviews by Papadopoulos and his wife, Simona Mangiante, have not been viewed well by the OSC.
The government then states, in conclusion, that incarceration is warranted but throws in a cautionary note about unwarranted sentencing disparities which may potentially mitigate the length of the sentence. Here, I think the OSC is simply putting in a mitigating line (throwing a bone to the issue of equanimity in sentencing) but the thrust of the memo is that the judge should feel free to disregrard the sentencing recommendation of the OSC in the plea agreement and instead look at the statute. The crimes committed by Papado warrant a more serious punishment.
What I see here is that Papadopoulos did provide a lot of information to the government, but not willingly. He limited his cooperation to the extent of confirming information found by the FBI themselves, but did not volunteer extra information. This is why I think the government canât quite state that Papado violated his plea agreement. He and his wife went to great lengths to undermine the OSC investigation in the public, but there is no indication that post-plea deal, Papadopoulos lied or withheld information from the government that was in his possession. The Mangiante interviews do seem to have irritated the OSC as there is an entire footnote devoted to debunking her spin.
Papado and Mangianteâs strategy appears to be to âTake the Lâ, take a 0-6 month jail sentence but preserve an opportunity for a pardon from Trump. The thing is that this memo seems to tell the Judge that he should feel free to consider the circumstances and perhaps use the statute as the guideline and provide a jail sentence of closer to the 5 years allowed. Recall that Section 7 of Papadopoulosâ plea deal has the heading âCourt Not Bound by This Agreement or the Sentencing Guidelinesâ. I donât think Papado read that part of it too well and thought he could hedge by giving some cooperation but not optimal cooperation. It will be up to the Judge (Randolph Moss), but instead of getting no jail time, Papadopoulos has now opened up the possibility that he could get up to 5 years. I think these 2 morons are gripped by pardon fever.
Update: I had said earlier in the week that the motion to seal discovery in this case was in part aimed at Mangiante. I think this memo would tend to confirm that. I also said that I thought Mangiante was a âwanna be spyâ, trying to work with the Daily Caller to undermine the investigation and curry favor with Trumpers and Russia. That also seems to be validated by this sentencing memo, especially the footnote critiquing Mangianteâs comments and making reference to the Daily Caller. I had also said that the OSC likely warned Papadopoulos about Mangiante and that he was obliging the OSC. Here, I think I was half right, half wrong. The memo would tend to validate that the OSC had concerns about public statements, and especially those of Mangiante. However, it seems to me that Papadopoulos was partly in on Mangianteâs angle with his limited brand of cooperation. It seems doubtful that the OSC got anything useful from him since about the end of December 2017. In that sense, Papadopoulos is taking jail time based in part on the urging of his wife. Why he would make such a decision is head scratching, but it is what it is.
I think thatâs what Mueller is telling the Judge in this memo. He cooperated in terms of verifying what they found on his devices, but he didnât quite do enough to make up for the fact that he let a Russian agent get away.
Not sure what you mean. Hereâs the (entire) conclusion of the memo:
And they say that after having said this:
No. If she committed a crime, indict her.
Those 2 lines are throw aways to avoid the appearance of inconsistency b/c Van Der Zwaan also had moments where he did not come clean until forced to. When the memo keeps repeating the word âimprisonmentâ and states that âimprisonment is warrantedâ, and further outlines in great detail the level of frustration with Papadopoulos and the impact of his lies on the investigation, itâs a clear message to the Judge for context when determining sentencing. Theyâre punting on that to the judge, but indicating how the prosecution feels about the quality of Papadoâs cooperation.
In my view, Papado did cooperate to the extent of validating the communications they found, so he would still have value as a witness. However, he provided little of value since the end of December and didnât quite make up for having let a Russian agent get away. The last 7-8 months of non-cooperation or limited value cooperation when he couldâve done a lot more while his wife was undermining the investigation in the court of public opinion (in coordinating with him) should warrant a higher than 6 month sentence. I think thatâs what Mueller is telling the Judge through this memo.
Agree that they want him imprisoned for a time, but disagree on the rest.
In particular, you say the SCO thinks the judge:
should feel free to ignore the plea deal and impose his own sentence within the statutory guidelines (up to 5 years)
Whereas, as quoted above, the memo concludes by submitting that a sentence within âthe applicable Guidelines range of 0 to 6 monthsâ imprisonmentâ would be "warranted and appropriate."
Thatâs hardly telling the judge that the offenses âwarrant a higher than 6 month sentence.â
But leaving that all aside, I also wonder about this:
So you donât think sheâs a Russian spy, but you do think sheâd like to be one? Or you used to think so?
I hope the judge gets the message loud and clear. Five years is the least he should do.
I donât know if she is a spy but I do know she has been in touch with the Daily Caller and has been highlighting propaganda which is very similar to what the Russians have said regarding Mifsud, Halper etc. I do think she is comically bad at this so that 's why I have some doubts as to whether she is in fact a spy. But she did work with Mifsud so who knows?
Sounds like Papa committed not only perjury but also obstruction of justice when he deliberately held out on Mueller. A harsher sentence sounds more appropriate to me.
Me, too.
Thanks for elaborating.
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Harsher than 30-90 days?
So is sentencing on a botched plea bargain like sentencing on other federal crimes (discussed in various manafort threads) where the judge can take into account other crimes the perp was accused of, even if they werenât convicted on them?