Chicago Trump adviser George Papadopoulos will admit 'inaccuracies'
CHICAGO (WLS) -- North Sider George Papadopoulos, a one-time foreign policy adviser to the Donald Trump campaign, will solicit for the mercy of a federal judge at his sentencing next week for lying to the FBI.
Papadopoulos, 31, "will take responsibility for some inaccuracies during the interview with the FBI," his wife Simona told the ABC7 I-Team on Wednesday. "I hope though that the judge will take into account the irrelevance of those 'inaccuracies'" during the September 7 sentencing, she said.
The DePaul degree-holder and Niles West High School graduate pleaded guilty nearly a year ago to making false statements to the FBI about contacts he had with Russian operatives during the 2016 presidential campaign.
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The government is asking U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss to sentence Papadopoulos to prison, up to six months, at the hearing a week from Friday in Washington, D.C.
The case was charged there by Special Counsel Robert Mueller who has been investigating allegations of Russia collusion in the 2016 American elections.
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While Mr. Papadopoulos hasn't spoken publicly about his role in the campaign, the allegations or his guilty plea, his wife on Wednesday said that he had a lack of "criminal intention." Defense attorneys, including Thomas Breen of Chicago, will ask Judge Moss to forgo jail time and sentence Papadopoulos to probation, court supervision or something other than incarceration.
Simona Papadopoulos has embarked on a public relations campaign for her newlywed husband, speaking with the I-Team in June and several national news organizations as well. Her regular Twitter presence on his behalf recently suggested that he was reconsidering his plea bargain with federal prosecutors-and that she was encouraging him to scrap the deal, find a new attorney and roll the dice on a trial.
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Legal experts interviewed by the I-Team stated that it wasn't that simple. They said that Papadopoulos actually had very slim odds of a plea retraction being accepted by Judge Moss.
After a meeting with his attorney last week in Chicago, Mrs. Papadopoulos told the I-Team that her husband had indeed decided to stick with the plea agreement. On Wednesday, that decision was apparently made formal with her announcement that sentencing would proceed as planned next week.
