George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign adviser, was sentenced to 14 days in prison for lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian intermediaries during the 2016 presidential race. He was the first Trump adviser to be sentenced in the special counsel investigation, the New York Times reports. Most first-time offenders convicted of lying to federal authorities are put on probation. Judge Randolph Moss said that Papadopoulos deserved a stiffer sentence because he had impeded an investigation of “grave national importance.” Prosecutors argued that Papadopoulos’s repeated lies during a January 2017 interview with investigators hampered the Russia investigation at a critical moment. In part because he misled authorities, they failed to arrest a London-based professor — suspected of being a Russian operative — before he left the U.S. in February 2017, never to return.
Papadopoulos, 31, gave his own account to the Times of why he deceived FBI agents after they arrived at his house in Chicago last year asking about any connections between the Trump campaign and Russian intermediaries. “I wanted to distance myself as much as possible — and Trump himself and the campaign — from what was probably an illegal action or dangerous information,” he said. He told the judge that he was blinded by personal ambition and the thrill of being part of Trump’s electoral victory. Just before his FBI interview, he had attended an inauguration event; just after, he promoted his campaign work as a reason he should be hired by the Energy Department. “I was surrounded by important people,” he told the judge. “I was young and ambitious and excited.”