Former foreign policy adviser to Trump campaign, George Papadopoulos, was long time on the radar as a part of the Senate panel’s inquiry into the possible Russian meddling in the presidential election, Senator Mark Warner, the vice chair on the Select Committee on Intelligence, said. Papadopoulos recently pleaded guilty to lying to federal prosecutors during the probe into the alleged Russian meddling in last year’s election.
Warner said that this was not the first time that Papadopoulos’s name was noticed by congressional investigators, but didn’t explain whether the adviser had previously been interviewed before the Senate panel, Politico reports.
“Mr. Papadopoulos had been on our screen for a long time,” Warner emphasized. According to him, hundreds of persons have already been interviewed as part of the probe but not everything has been published.
“We actually interviewed literally a couple hundred individuals, many times without actually even the knowledge of the press,” Warner said.
The senator added that although some of the information revealed by the team of the special counsel Robert Mueller has been obtained by the Senate panel, there are still some questions. Warner said that the fact that Papadopoulos had sought information on Hilary Clinton’s emails when he contacted with Russian-linked persons is the reason why the probe into potential campaign ties to Russia should continue.
“What we did see this week, though, was one more example of at least where the Russians had what appeared to be a fairly organized effort in terms of trying to reach out to folks affiliated with the Trump campaign to share ‘dirt’ or emails about Hillary Clinton,” the senator said on NBC’s “Meet the Press”.
Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his associate Rick Gates were indicted by a federal grand jury on 12 charges last week.
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