Papadopoulos 'set up by FBI-CIA operative'

George Papadopoulos

The man former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos claimed gave him a mysterious $10,000 cash payment, Israeli citizen George Tawil, was a former intelligence asset for the CIA and FBI, according to documents publicized by WikiLeaks.

The revelation, the Gateway Pundit blog points out, suggest that Papadopoulos – who has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in Robert Mueller's probe – could have been set up by the special counsel in a sting operation.

Already, evidence has surfaced that another incident frequently presented as proof of Trump-Russia collusion – the Trump Tower meeting that included Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer – appears to have been set up by operatives supporting Hillary Clinton's campaign.

Last week, the Daily Caller reported a reference in a court document filed by Mueller in which Papadopoulos claimed he was given a $10,000 cash payment by a man he believed to be a spy. The man, the Daily Caller learned, was Tawil, who handed over the money during a meeting in an Israeli hotel room in July 2017.

The Conservative Treehouse blog connected Tawil to the CIA and FBI via a cable from about 2006 posted by WikiLeaks.

The cable states: "These undisclosed sources told Zuma that American citizens (not connected with the U.S. Government) were involved. This in part, coincides with another Embassy contact, Charles Tawil (protect), who told our Economic Counselor on November 29 that Zuma had received information from the mother of the King of Swaziland about CIA attempts to kill Zuma using poisoned clothes from the FBI."

The blog, noting that Robert Mueller was the director of the FBI in 2006, contends the $10,000 payment to Papadopoulos "was almost guaranteed to be a sting operation; a set-up," pointing out that the Daily Caller reported federal agents were waiting for Papadopoulos at Dulles International Airport near Washington, D.C., upon his re-entry into the U.S. on June 27, 2016.

The FBI intercepted Papadopoulos and arrested him as soon as he got off the plane on a flight from Munich.

Papadopoulos had left the $10,000 with an attorney in Greece. If had had it in possession without declaring it, the FBI would have charged him with a treasury violation, which would have given Mueller more leverage.

The Daily Caller noted that in an interview in June with CNN's Jake Tapper, Papadopoulos' wife, Mangiante Papadopoulos, described several "shady characters" who she said approached her husband during and after the 2016 presidential campaign.