George Papadopoulos, the former 2016 Trump campaign staffer targeted in the FBI’s probe of the campaign’s purported links to Russia, said he thinks the Justice Department has an airtight legal case to prosecute former CIA Director John O. Brennan and former FBI Director James B. Comey for promoting the false narrative.
In an interview with The Washington Times, Mr. Papadopoulos responded to reports of a federal criminal investigation against Mr. Comey and Mr. Brennan by saying President Trump has had numerous recent discussions with foreign leaders that may have provided more information about the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane surveillance on his 2016 campaign.
“I’m under the working assumption that for such a massive headline to emerge, that the DOJ has an airtight case against both of these people,” he said. “I believe the reason the president has had numerous discussions with people like [Prime Minister] Giorgia Meloni in Italy, U.K. Prime Minister [Keir Starmer] and [Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel is not simply due to economic policy or geopolitics.”
Mr. Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser, said he believes these countries and their agents directly or indirectly “involved themselves in Crossfire Hurricane or in the surveillance operation against the [2016] Trump campaign.”
“I think what they’re looking at is a criminal conspiracy that involves both the CIA and the FBI coordinating with foreign intelligence groups to basically concoct this operation against the 2016 campaign,” Mr. Papadopoulos said. “So, I think that’s exactly why they simultaneously, both [Mr. Brennan and Mr. Comey] from both agencies, came under a criminal investigation.”
The FBI has launched criminal investigations into Mr. Brennan and Mr. Comey over possible wrongdoing related to the Trump-Russia investigation, including alleged perjury to Congress, sources say.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe sent evidence of possible wrongdoing by Mr. Brennan to FBI Director Kash Patel to investigate for potential prosecution.
The referral, which was first reported by Fox News Digital, described Mr. Brennan’s and Mr. Comey’s interactions as a “conspiracy,” which could open up a wide range of potential prosecutorial options.
“If Patel and Ratcliffe are looking at charging these two with low-level crimes like perjury or lying under oath, I think that’s going to backfire on the administration, so I don’t think that that’s really what’s going on here,” Mr. Papadopoulos said.
“From a personal standpoint, I’m extremely happy, because I think this has been a long time coming,” he said. “I think this should have been done under the Durham investigation, but clearly, you know, [special counsel John] Durham didn’t feel he could go all the way, even though he said that the [Crossfire Hurricane] investigation didn’t start the way that [special counsel Robert] Mueller said it did.”
Mr. Papadopoulos says there are still questions that need to be answered, including those about the involvement of Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud, FBI informant Stephan Halper and Mr. Halper’s assistant, known as Azra Turk.
“What about the involvement of foreign intelligence agencies — what their motivations were? Were they instructed to do this by Brennan? Was Barack Obama involved in guiding Brennan and Comey?” Mr. Papadopoulos asked.
The Brennan investigation comes following a new report from the CIA that condemned the way intelligence agencies, including the CIA under Mr. Brennan, concluded that Russia had interfered with the 2016 presidential election in Mr. Trump’s favor.
The FBI declined to comment.
Mr. Trump on Wednesday said Mr. Brennan and Mr. Comey may have to “pay a price” for their possible wrongdoing amid the Russia hoax.
“I know nothing about it other than what I read today, but I will tell you I think they’re very dishonest people,” Mr. Trump told reporters while meeting with African leaders. “I think they’re crooked as hell, and maybe they have to pay a price for that.”
Mr. Ratcliffe last week made public a “lessons-learned review” of the steps taken in the intelligence community assessment titled “Russia’s Influence Campaign Targeting the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.” The review focused on whether Russian President Vladimir Putin “aspired” to help Mr. Trump win his first election.
The investigations dominated the president’s first term, even though he vehemently denied any connection to the Kremlin.
In social media posts after the release of the memo last week, Mr. Ratcliffe said the president “has trusted me with helping to end weaponization of US intelligence.”
He said the new report “underscores that the 2017 [intelligence community] Assessment was conducted through an atypical & corrupt process under the politically charged environments of former Dir. Brennan & former FBI Dir. [James] Comey.”
According to new documents about Crossfire Hurricane released by the FBI in April, top brass in the FBI and intelligence community were determined to stop Mr. Trump from winning the White House in 2016, and they talked about removing him from office months after his inauguration.
Some of the material was released by Mr. Trump on the final day of his first term in 2021. Other pages provide greater detail about the unprecedented secret investigation and spy operation on Mr. Trump’s campaign that followed him into the White House.
On Aug. 3, 2016, during the final stretch of the presidential campaign, Mr. Brennan met with President Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden and other senior administration officials, including Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch, to discuss “Russian interference efforts,” according to a memo declassified in 2020 and written by Mr. Ratcliffe, who was the director of national intelligence.
Mr. Brennan briefed the group on the “intelligence” that the Clinton presidential campaign had gathered on Mr. Trump. He told the group of the “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on 26 July of a proposal from one of her [campaign] advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.”
In October 2017, Mr. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to a felony charge of making false statements to FBI agents who were investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. He served 12 days in federal prison. Mr. Trump later pardoned him, and Mr. Papadopoulos has consistently said the FBI was guilty of entrapment in his case.
