The unsealing of a false-statements plea deal by campaign volunteer George Papadopoulos may involve someone not named explicitly in either indictment: Attorney General Jeff Sessions, The Intercept reports. That’s because Sessions has repeatedly testified to the Senate that he knows nothing about any collusion with the Russians. The Papadopoulos plea shows that Sessions — then acting as Trump’s top foreign policy adviser — was in a March 31, 2016, meeting with Trump, at which Papadopoulos explained “he had connections that could help arrange a meeting between then-candidate Trump and President Putin.” It also shows that Papadopoulos kept campaign officials in the loop on his efforts to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin, though they secretly determined that the meeting “should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal,” itself a sign the campaign was trying to hide its efforts to make nice with the Russians.
Papadopoulos also learned, on April 26, that the Russians “have dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.” A key part of Papadopoulos’s cooperation must pertain to what he told the Trump campaign about these emails. According to his complaint, he originally claimed he hadn’t told anyone on the campaign about the dirt on Clinton because he didn’t know if it was real. As his plea makes clear, after being arrested, he “met with the Government on numerous occasions to provide information and answer questions.”