Note: This article is a podcast summary of Episode 978 of The Dan Bongino Show, titled “It’s Over.”
Long-time listeners of the show know about the FBI’s attempts to entrap George Papadopoulos in London by trying to goad him into revealing information about Hillary Clinton’s hacked emails that he did not posses. The FBI would later claim suspicions regarding Papadopoulos’ contacts was their justification for opening a secretive counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign, even though all evidence suggests it was Christopher Steele’s dossier that actually justified it.
That wasn’t all – new revelations indicate there was yet another attempt to entrap Papadopoulos, this one possibly coming from Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel.
Buried on the final page of the memo recommending that Papadopoulos serve 6-months in jail for making false statements to the FBI is a reference to a $10,000 payment Papadopoulos said he received from a foreign national he suspected to be a spy. The court filing recommended a fine between $500-$9,500 for that (and a $9,500 fine was part of his sentence).
This is where things get interesting. According to the Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross:
While Mueller’s court filing makes no other reference to the individual, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned that a man named Charles Tawil gave Papadopoulos $10,000 during a meeting in an Israeli hotel room in July 2017.
It must be emphasized here how bizarre it is to pay someone $10,000 in cash for a business transaction in the modern age.
Sources familiar with the matter told TheDCNF Tawil flew to the Greek island of Mykonos to meet Papadopoulos and his now-wife, Simona Mangiante Papadopoulos. Tawil invited the pair to Israel, but Mangiante Papadopoulos stayed behind.
Earlier Papadapoulos had flown to Cyprus on June 9th according to his book “Deep State Target.” Of note, there’s a record of Andrew Weissman, an attorney for Robert Mueller’s special counsel, on the island on June 13th (source: page 5), but Talking Points Memo claims this was related to investigating Paul Manafort.
Papadopoulos gave the money to an attorney in Greece before traveling back to the U.S., a source told The Daily Caller on the condition of anonymity. Papadopoulos was arrested at Dulles International Airport on a return trip from overseas on July 27, 2017.
Papadopoulos and Tawil met through an Israeli political strategist named David Ha’ivri. Ha’ivri told The Daily Caller said that he introduced the pair “at my own initiative” to facilitate a business deal involving an oil and gas project in the Aegean and Mediterranean seas.
When Papadopoulos landed at Dulles airport he was immediately greeted by FBI agents as he landed. They already had his baggage in their possession.
This is where the dollar value of $10,000 becomes relevant – as it’s the exact threshold for which one needs to declare assets when entering the country. The FBI likely had hoped to catch Papadopoulos with $10,000 that he didn’t declare, but he didn’t have the cash on him because he wisely left it in Greece. With that likely plan failing, instead the FBI arrested him for “false statements.” Also of note, Papadopoulos was flying into Dullas airport for a connecting flight back to Chicago, and it would’ve been standard for him to have been arrested at his ending destination of Chicago. Papadopoulos would’ve been forced to claim money at Dulles (his initial entry back into the U.S.) – but not in Chicago.
Even more suspicious, Papadopoulos claimed on Twitter that the bills he was given are marked (with the purpose to tracing the money to him); comments he reiterated while appearing on Maria Bartiromo’s show this week. “I actually want Congress, Barr, Horowitz, and Huber to review the bills because I still have the bills and I think they are marked,” Papadopoulos said. “These bills that are still in Athens right now must be examined by the investigators because I think they are marked and they’re going to go all the way back to DOJ, under the previous FBI under Comey, and even the Mueller team.”
“If the Mueller team is going around entrapping campaign associates and Trump associates, the way they did to me — I am sure it wasn’t just me they did it to — it’s going to open up a massive can of worms,” Papadopoulos continued. “I think we need to get to the bottom of exactly not only how did this story start, but why were they entrapping us moving forward.”
Give the show a listen yourself…
