George Papadopoulos - Deep State Target: How I Got Caught in the Crosshairs of the Plot to Bring Down President Trump

Diversion Books

A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1004

New York, New York 10016

www.DiversionBooks.com

Copyright 2019 by George Papadopoulos

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

For more information, email

Book design by Pauline Neuwirth, Neuwirth & Associates.

First Diversion Books edition March 2019.

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-63576-493-2

eBook ISBN: 978-1-63576-494-9

Printed in the U.S.A.

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To my wife, Simona,
who has been my rock through this entire saga

CONTENTS

I TS NOT SO bad here.

My cellmates a skinny guy with a thing for tattoos. He also has a thing for narcotics, apparently, because hes already told me hes facing seven years for drug possession.

The chicken wings they serve on Wednesdays are really good, he reassures me.

Our other cellmatesa guy who cant stop talking about the Bible, a Hispanic guy who doesnt speak much English, and a rambling maniac who claims to have worked for the State Departmentall nod in agreement.

Spicy but not too spicy.

They are the shit!

Amen!

I dont give a damn about the chicken wings. When you find yourself shell-shocked and sleep deprived in a holding cell and told youre facing twenty-five years in prison, you have other things on your mind besides food.

On the other hand, this chicken wing soliloquy is about the only thing that has made any sense in the last twenty-four hours.

One day earlier, on July 27, 2017, I had flown into Dulles Airport, ending the second leg of my Athens to Munich to D.C. to Chicago flight plan. When I disembarked, a team of FBI hustled me off to a secluded area of the airport and immediately tore through my briefcase and bags, feverishly searching for something. I watched the agents rifle through my bags twice. Then I watched them confer with each other, agitated looks on their faces. It was clear to me that theyd expected to find something important. It was equally clear from their pissed-off expressions that they hadnt found it.

My mind was reeling. What the hell were they looking for? Just days earlier, cutting short a vacation with the love of my life on the island of Mykonos, I had gone to Israel to meet a man who said he wanted to do business. He summoned me to his hotel room in Tel Aviv and gave me $10,000 as a retainer. In cash. Unsure of his motives or associations, I had left the money with a lawyer in Greece and headed home. Was that what the FBI expected to find? A load of undeclared cash? And if so, how did they know to look for it? Was it all some kind of setup?

They handcuffed me and shackled my ankles. I spotted the two agents who had interviewed me months earlier in Chicago. When I asked them what was going on, I got no answer. When I repeated my question, another agent sneered, This is what happens when you work for Trump.

Again, my mind was flying in a dozen directions. As a member of Donald Trumps foreign policy advisory team, I had helped set up meetings with foreign heads of state. I had defended the candidate against governments that had criticized him. I had met with foreign ministers and senior diplomats and had attended international conferences and embassy parties. I couldnt think of anything Id done that had broken the law. Hell, I dont even smoke pot.

I asked again: What had I done, and why was I being arrested? This is what happens when you work with Russians, a G-man taunted me.

That answer sent me into a further panic. Russians? The agents in Chicago had asked me about Russians. And theyd asked what Id heard about Russians. And thenover and over and overthey had asked who I had talked to about what I had heard.

As I remembered it, I had told investigators that in the last year, while working as a foreign policy advisor for the campaign, I had met a number of people who claimed to have connections to the Russian government. But as far as I knew, I had met only one Russian in my entire lifealthough when I think back on it, Im not even certain she really was Russian.

Until that moment in Dulles Airportan army of men in black basically accusing me of working with RussiansI dont think I knew what real terror was. I was about to get a crash course.

Terror is facing the complete unknown and having all your assumptions turned upside down.

Its the FBI telling you that you are under arrest without telling you what youve done.

Its being hauled off in a black SUV.

Its asking to be able to contact your girlfriend and your family and realizing nobody is going to lift a finger for you.

Its suddenly wondering if the people you thought you were working with to further the agenda of a presidential candidateto create positive relationships to further American interestsare not who they pretended to be.

Its going before a judge and waitingbecause the famous dream-team prosecutors working for Robert Mueller are more than an hour late filing charges, evidently struggling to figure out what charges to file.

Its hearing prosecutors say you are going to face twenty-five years in prison.

Its being charged with lying to FBI investigators and having no idea what you lied about.

Its having no one believe youeven when you are telling the absolute truth.

Its realizing youve had a target on your back for more than a yearbut having no idea why its there or who is aiming at you.

In other words, terror is when absolutely nothing makes any sense and you lose faith that it ever will.

So, about those chicken wings: I laugh about it nowthe idea that all I might have had to look forward to in life were Wednesdays chicken wings while I served out a long prison sentence. But my fellow inmates, bless them one and all, were truly human. They were talking about comfort food and trying to help a totally freaked-out newcomer look on the bright side.

Even when none seemed to exist.

Compared to the aggressive, threatening, uncommunicative lawmen who tossed me in a prison cell without telling me why, the gourmands of that Iron Bar Hotel werent criminals, they were cellblock buddies.

At least they made sense.

Its taken me a long time to figure out what led to my arrest. I realize that I misspoke to the FBI, but I wasnt lying to hide anything other than an extremely irritating and embarrassing cat-and-mouse game. Ill go into that in more detail, but for now, let me just say that I talked dismissively about someone who I discovered to be a charlatan. And guess what? I was right about him. But I was wrong to not fully, accurately characterize my waste-of-time interactions with this guy named Joseph Mifsud. And the lie I was charged with, as youll see, certainly wasnt intentional.

But why was I a target at all? That is what has taken time to unravelto fully understand why there was a bullseye on my back. This book explains why I was set up and who I believe was pulling the strings.

When it all started, back in 2016, I was a young, earnest, hard-working man from Chicago with a strong interest in international politics. I landed in a coveted position and suddenly found myself in a world filled with influence peddlers who seem to have stepped out of the pages of The Maltese Falcon and Jason Bourne novels. Almost everyone I metand I found this out much laterhad ties to intelligence outfits. Diplomats and academics recorded conversations with me. Businessmen offered me tens of thousands of dollars to work with themwithout ever specifying what the work was. In the middle of all this, I met a stunning Italian womana brainy blonde who spoke five languagesand I became completely smitten. What happened nextwell, you know a bit about the FBI. But Ive left out the CIA, MI6, Australian intelligence, Turkish operatives, private intelligence companies, and a university that specializes in training spooks.