George Papadopoulos, President Donald Trump's former campaign foreign policy adviser, said Friday he was "quite frankly shocked" that special counsel Robert Mueller was truthful about why he'd been targeted in connection with the Trump investigation.
“I was actually really impressed and quite frankly shocked that Bob Mueller told the truth about why I was illicitly targeted and it really had nothing to do with Russia. It had to do with my ties to Israel,” Papadopoulos told Fox News' "Fox and Friends."
He added that if he was targeted for his ties to Israel, and various spies were discussing those ties with him, "I think that's very disturbing and probably is going to reveal quite frankly how this entire investigation started.”
Papadopoulos was sentenced to 12 days in prison for making false statements to federal prosecutors, but he said Thursday there was no collusion.
"Of course, I wasn't colluding because I have never met a Russian official in my entire life, let alone on the campaign or the transition team,” Papadopoulos said. “Quite comically, the guy at the epicenter of this fake collusion story, Joseph Mifsud, was outed yesterday by the Italians living next to the U.S. Embassy for the last year."
Mifsud was the professor Papadopoulos had claimed told him in April 2016 that Russia had "dirt" that could harm Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign.
“Quite frankly, I don't think anybody is buying that this guy was some Russian intermediary or Russian spy trying to collude with me," said Stephanopoulos. "Even people like Rudy Giuliani are going public and stating that he was probably part of some sort of setup."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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