Back On August 17, 2018 the Office of the Special Counsel’s (OSC) filed a sentencing memorandum for George Papadopoulos with the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
Papadopoulos had pleaded guilty to one count of making false statements to an FBI investigator in violation of 18 U.S. Code § 1001(a).
Four days later, on August 21, 2018, after applying some logic to some research, we submitted an article that concluded Special Counsel Mueller’s office had conspired to entrap Papadopoulus less than a month after Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had appointed Mueller.
Charles Tawil had arranged to meet Papadopoulos ostensibly because of his expertise and connections in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East to help facilitate an oil and gas project that Tawil was said to be working on.
Tawil gave Papadopoulos a $10,000 cash retainer. Papadopoulos accepted the money but smartly placed it with a Greek attorney before boarding a plane to return to the United States.
Tawil is known to have served as an intelligence asset for the FBI and CIA in 2006.
When Papadopoulos arrived at Dulles Airport, Mueller had FBI agents waiting for him at the terminal. They searched his bags looking for the $10,000 in cash. No warrant was necessary because it was part of a routine airport customs check.
According to Politico:
[W]hen he was arrested [detained] at Dulles Airport on July 27 after coming off a flight from Munich, prosecutors had no warrant for him and no indictment or criminal complaint. The complaint would be filed the following morning and approved by [Judge] Howell in Washington.
And when prosecutors filed the complaint the next day they got a spoken order from Howell to seal it, but followed up with a written request that they could take to the magistrate in Alexandria, where they showed up almost an hour later than she expected.
All of it suggests something of a scramble, rather than a carefully prepared plan to take Papadopoulos into custody. (more)
The sting collapsed when the FBI couldn’t pin a treasury violation on Papadopoulos, but agents detained him anyway and worked on him until they finally got him admit to a lesser – a much lesser – charge than they had hoped for.
This would explain why attorneys for the OSC showed up to court an hour late. They were scrambling to create a headline negative to President Trump, er, something with which to charge Papadopoulos. Yeah, that’s it, something to charge Papadopoulos with.
While evidence developed early in the special counsel’s tenure that Mueller had abandoned the Russia collusion investigation, realizing “there was no there, there,” Mueller kept up the charade.
We suspected that the OSC kept the collusion charade in the public consciousness as a necessary predicate to give the OSC cover as they attempted to goad President Trump into an obstruction of justice charge.
It now appears that everything about the OSC’s work was predicated on conflating manufactured “evidence” to create the appearance that Trump had colluded with a foreign power and had then sought to obstruct the investigation, all to sully the president politically.
Specifically, Andrew Weissmann, the so-called “pit bull,” targeted Papadopoulos.
Weissman has a history of questionable prosecutions based on dubious application of the law.
- He destroyed the accounting firm of Arthur Andersen LLP and with it the 85,000 jobs. The Supreme Court unanimously reversed the lower court a few years later.
- He concocted a criminal a transaction between four Merrill Lynch executives and Enron, the mass of which was reversed by the Fifth Circuit on appeal. But, not before the defendants spent a year in prison.
In our October 20, 2017 article we suggested that Mueller was more concerned with damaging the president president politically than in investigating collusion to a legitimate conclusion. Mueller’s mission was to create enough doubt about the president to drive his approval ratings low enough to make impeachment politically viable.
This explains why Weissmann set about creating an entrapment scheme for Papadopoulos.
Weissmann was counting on Papadopoulos carrying the undeclared cash with him as he entered the United States. Had Papadopoulos done that he would have been subject to multiple felony counts:
- Papadopoulos, who had been lured to Israel by a CIA asset, and paid in Israel provided an outline that he was acting on behalf of a foreign nation. A violation of FARA laws (ie. Papadopoulos as an agent of Israel).
- Carrying $10,000 (or more) in cash into the U.S., without reporting it is a violation of U.S. treasury laws.
- Coupled with the FARA violation, the $10,000 could be conflated into laundering charges.
Evidence of Weissman’s plan is suggested by Weissman’s own schedule, that was only recently released in documents obtained through a FOIA ruling.
Now thanks to the work of Twitter sleuths, Undercover Huber and Rosie memos, who scoured through these rather mundane documents, new evidence suggesting the special counsel’s entrapment scheme, led by Andrew Weissmann, has been brought to light.
MLARS is the Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section of the Justice Department.
MLAT is Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty. It appears that Weissmann was getting his legal ducks in order.
Possible disclaimer:
What makes Weissmann’s entrapment scheme worse is this admission from the Mueller Report:
If we are to believe the Mueller Report, Rod Rosenstein, Robert Mueller, former FBI legal counsel Jim Baker, former Deputy FBI Director McCabe, were all supervising Weissmann’s entrapment scheme.
This doesn’t look good.
