Papadopoulos sticking with plea deal with Mueller, wife says

Former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos is sticking with his plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller, his wife reportedly said Wednesday.

The decision follows weeks of mixed signals over whether Papadopoulos would scrap the deal that led to his guilty plea over lying to federal investigators.

“George will take responsibility for some inaccuracies during the interview with the FBI,” Papadopoulos’s wife, Simona Mangiante, told ABC News.

Mangiante confirmed to The Hill that Papadopoulos was standing by his plea deal late Wednesday. 

“I hope though that the judge will take into account the irrelevance of those “inaccuracies ” at the purposes of the investigation and the lack of “criminal intention,” she said. 

{mosads}Her comments came after she said earlier this month that she wanted her husband to back out of the deal after her confidence in the Mueller probe wavered.

“I trusted the institutions until they proved me wrong,” Mangiante told MSNBC, adding that she had been made aware of “exculpatory evidences that fully justify him to drop off his plea agreement.”

Papadopoulos pleaded guilty last year to lying to FBI agents about his communications with Russians and a London professor. He agreed, at the time, to cooperate with Mueller’s ongoing investigation.

Mueller recommended this month that Papadopoulos be sentenced to zero to six months in prison and face a fine of $9,500.

“The defendant knew the questions he was asked by the FBI were important, and he knew his answers were false at the time he gave them. His lies negatively affected the FBI’s Russia investigation, and prevented the FBI from effectively identifying and confronting witnesses in a timely fashion,” the filing containing the recommendation states.

— Updated 11:24 p.m.