UPDATED: Devin Nunes Looking At Team Mueller Lying Re Papadopoulos

UPDATE: A new article at Just the News expands on Lee Smith's earlier piece:

House Republicans considering criminal referrals against Mueller prosecutors 

Rep. Devin Nunes says action could force DOJ to look at conduct of Mueller team, accuracy of final Russia report.

Nunes is talking about referring the Team Mueller prosecutors to DoJ.


Lee Smith has a very interesting article today at John Solomon's new site, Just the News:

Declassified FBI memos undercut Mueller team claims that Papadopoulos hindered Russia probe

Prosecutor who recently resigned from Roger Stone case signed court filings omitting evidence of witness cooperation

Judicial Watch has obtained the FBI interview reports (FD-302s) on George Papadopoulos. The picture that those 302s paint of Papadopoulos' interviews is strikingly at variance with the picture that the Team Mueller prosecutors--Aaron Zelinsky, Jeannie Rhee, and Andrew Goldstein--paint in their sentencing memo.

The story line is a bit convoluted, perhaps intentionally so. Basically, Team Mueller claims that Papadopoulos "lied" repeatedly because Papadopoulos repeatedly maintained that when he was meeting with Mifsud and a pair of Russian nationals--in March, 2016--he was not yet part of the Trump campaign. Papadopoulos maintained that he became part of the campaign in April, 2016. But it appears that Team Mueller hedges a bit, rather slyly. Here's the actual wording of the sentencing memo:

the defendant met the Professor for the first time on or about March 14, 2016, after the defendant had already learned he would be a foreign policy advisor for the Trump campaign;

"He would be" actually refers to the future. The future may well have been April--in Papadopoulos' mind. Moreover, Team Mueller frankly admits--but after long pages of turgid prose devoted to Papadopoulos' iniquity:

The government cannot definitively know what motivated the defendant to lie to the agents on January 27, 2017. But the record shows that at the time of the interview, the defendant was attempting to secure a job with the Trump Administration and had an incentive to protect the Administration and minimize his own role as a witness.

Again, notice that this is rather cagey language. If you don't actually know why a person makes a statement that appears to be at variance with the facts as you want those facts to be, well, that means you don't really know that the person was lying. Because lying involves motives; it involves intent to deceive. So Team Mueller is backhandedly admitting that they don't really know that Papadopoulos was lying--but they're quite willing to guess, and they're quite willing to make assertions in that regard, as long as they insert clever escape clauses. But the bottom line, ethically, is that if they couldn't show that Papadopoulos intended to deceive them about a matter that was, after all, pretty much public record, then they should never have charged him with lying.

You may ask, What harm did Papadopoulos' false statements do? Team Mueller claims they hindered an effective investigation of Mifsud and prevented the FBI from detaining Mifsud after they interviewed him in Washington, DC, in February, 2017. But the prosecutors never explain in the sentencing memo how that worked. After all, they don't dispute that Papadopoulos told them the whole truth and nothing but the truth when re recounted what Mifsud said to him about the Russians and the Hillary emails. It all seems to come down to the timing. Team Mueller wanted Papadopoulos to say that Mifsud approached him as a member of the Trump campaign, and Papadopoulos kept saying, No, it was before I was actually part of the campaign.

It all comes down to perception, on Papadopoulos' part. And you can imagine the frustration on the part of Team Mueller--so near and yet so far! But when you look at the 302s, the picture you get is of a Papadopoulos who is eager to be truthful and cooperative. Which, from Team Mueller's point of view, may have been the real problem. Team Mueller wasn't actually investigating Mifsud and what he may or may not have known about the Russians. They were simply trying to tie supposed Russian misdeeds to the Trump campaign, and Papadopoulos saying, No, that all happened before I was part of the campaign was no help at all. Papadopoulos confirming what Mifsud said was no use, because it didn't point to the Trump campaign.

Poor Lee Smith! He has lots of questions about all this, but nobody wants to comment! Not the FBI, not DoJ, and definitely not Aaron Zelinsky, who is back in Baltimore after very publicly quitting the Roger Stone prosecution. The only person willing to comment on it all was Devin Nunes:

Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., who played a central role in uncovering other abuses in the Russia investigation including insertion of false information in an application for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant targeting the Trump campaign, said the new revelations about the Papadopoulos case are deeply troubling.

The declassified 302s "provide our first evidence of the Mueller team lying to the court,” Nunes told Just the News in a podcast set to be aired on Tuesday. "The whole idea seemed nonsensical from the beginning that in the sentencing memorandum they would say that he stalled their investigation into Joseph Mifsud. Now, we know from the 302 actually the opposite is true. The truth is that Papadopoulos offered, told the FBI, that Mifsud was going to be in the United States."

For more details, follow the link.