Thursday, 13 June 2019

The one about the Australian entitled private school twit & political dunce, with a penchant for fishnet and leopard skin, who did the United States of America the favour of the century


ABC News, 24 May 2019:

One rainy night in May 2016, a Trump campaign advisor named George Papadopoulos walked into a posh wine bar in affluent West London.

The meeting at the Kensington Wine Rooms was only meant to be a drink with Australia's High Commissioner to the UK, Alexander Downer.

It is still hard to believe that former Howard Government minister and Liberal MP for Mayo Alexander John Gosse Downer AC, as High Commissioner for Australia in the United Kingdom - a man who once posed like this (left) - actually managed to alert the US  government which triggered the Federal Bureau of Investigation examination of Donald J. Trump's presidential election campaign and Russian interference in US electoral processes.

However, the Mueller Report indicates at a number of points that this is the case.

U.S. Dept. of Justice, Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election, Volume I of ll, Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, III, March 2019, extracts:

In late July 2016, soon after WikiLeaks's first release of stolen documents, a foreign government contacted the FBI about a May 2016 encounter with Trump Campaign foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos. Papadopoulos had suggested to a representative of that foreign government that the Trump Campaign had received indications from the Russian government that it could assist the Campaign through the anonymous release of information damaging to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. That information prompted the FBI on July 31, 2016, to open an investigation into whether individuals associated with the Trump Campaign were coordinating with the Russian government in its interference activities……

July 2016 was also the month WikiLeaks first released emails stolen by the GRU from the DNC. On July 22, 2016, WikiLeaks posted thousands of internal DNC documents revealing information about the Clinton Campaign. Within days, there was public reporting that U.S. intelligence agencies had "high confidence" that the Russian government was behind the theft of emails and documents from the DNC. And within a week of the release, a foreign government informed the FBI about its May 2016 interaction with Papadopoulos and his statement that the Russian government could assist the Trump Campaign. On July 31, 2016, based on the foreign government repo11ing, the FBI opened an investigation into potential coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump Campaign…..

In late April 2016, Papadopoulos was told by London-based professor Joseph Mifsud, immediately after Mifsud's return from a trip to Moscow, that the Russian government had obtained "dirt" on candidate Clinton in the form of thousands of emails. One week later, on May 6, 2016, Papadopoulos suggested to a representative of a foreign government that the Trump Campaign had received indications from the Russian government that it could assist the Campaign through the anonymous release of information that would be damaging to candidate Clinton…..

Further reading

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