Mueller recommends Papadopoulos be sentenced to up to 6 months in prison
Special counsel Robert Mueller has recommended that former Trump campaign staffer George Papadopoulos be sentenced to zero to six months in prison and face a fine of $9,500.
Mueller stated in a court filing Friday that those penalties “are warranted and appropriate” for Papadopoulos’s conduct in lying to federal investigators.
Mueller wrote in the filing that Papadopoulos chose to lie to federal investigators during a voluntary interview and that he “was expressly warned that it is a crime to lie to federal investigators.”
“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 court document states.
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The former Trump campaign employee reached a plea agreement with Mueller’s team last year and is set to be sentenced in September.
Papadopoulos’s wife, Simona Mangiante, is urging her husband to break off the plea deal and stop cooperating with Mueller.
The White House has sought to downplay Papadopoulos’s role on the Trump campaign, saying that he was a “coffee boy.”
Papadopoulos is one of three former Trump campaign officials who have pleaded guilty to lying to investigators, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn and businessman Richard Gates.
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