George Papadopoulos, the disgraced former foreign policy aide to the Trump campaign, is learning the hard way how Twitter works.
Just weeks after he was sentenced to two weeks of jail time and forced to pay a $9,500 fine for lying to the FBI in Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, Papadopoulos fired off several tweets indicating that he regretted doing so. A
ccording to court documents regarding Papadopoulos’ motion to continue his bail and delay going to prison, Papadopoulos used Twitter, the public forum, to express his displeasure at the situation. And that, Mueller says, shows that Papadopoulos legal motion has no standing, and that’s he’s just trying to delay his jail time
Papadopoulos pled guilty last year to lying to the FBI about his contact with a foreign professor with ties to the Russian government and a Russian woman. Both promised they had compromising information on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, particularly regarding her emails.
Papadopoulos pled guilty to lying to the FBI in October 2017 and was sentenced a year later. In October of 2018, Papadopoulos said in a now-deleted tweet “that his prosecution constituted ‘the biggest case of entrapment,’” according to the documents. He also tweeted, “I have been sentenced to prison in our country while having exculpatory evidence hidden from me. If I knew what I knew today, I never would have plead [sic] guilty.”
On Nov. 9 of this year, Papadopoulos tweeted: “Biggest regret? Pleading guilty.”
At various points over the past year, both Papadopoulos and his wife, Simona Mangiante, have hinted that Papadopoulos would withdraw his guilty plea, although that has not happened.
In his sentencing, Papadopoulos expressed remorse for his actions, saying his actions “were wrong, it was a crime.” He also acknowledged that his confession “signals to all future and current witnesses in this investigation that this investigation has global implications and that the truth matters.”
Whether Papadopoulos didn’t understand that the FBI would be reading and archiving his tweets, or he thinks his Trump-like strategy of publicly expressing his own version of the truth will get him off the hook, the tweets in question aren’t likely to help his case.
He is supposed to report on Monday to the Bureau of Prisons to start his sentence.
