He has been mocked by President Trump as a ?low level volunteer? and ?proven to be a liar.?
But the fiancee of George Papadopoulos, the former Trump campaign adviser who pleaded guilty in October to lying to the FBI about his Russia contacts and is cooperating with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, says he is being miscast.
?I believe history will remember him like John Dean,? said Italian-born Simona Mangiante, referring to the former White House counsel who pleaded guilty to his role in the Watergate coverup and then became a key witness against other aides to President Richard Nixon.
Mangiante said she was advised by Papadopoulos?s lawyers not to answer specific questions about his activities during the 2016 presidential campaign or what he has told the FBI.
But she indicated in an interview that she believes he ultimately will emerge as more than a bit player in the Russia probe ? and that his decision to cooperate after he was arrested getting off an airplane at Dulles International Airport in July was a key turning point.
Without offering specifics, Mangiante said there is much more that has not yet been told publicly about Papadopoulos? 10 months as an informal national security adviser to Trump and his interactions with a London-based professor who told Papadopoulos, according to court filings, that the Russians had ?dirt? on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
?There?s a lot to come,? she said. ?He was the first one to break a hole on all of this.?
She said Papadopoulos was not a ?coffee boy,? as he was once tagged by former Trump adviser Michael Caputo, a nickname she found especially galling. ?I know what it means as a young person to do all the efforts you do to build your career and be dismissed as a coffee boy,? she said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...=.a7a252a20a97