Mr. Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about his contacts with Mr. Mifsud, which began in March 2016 and continued for months. And these lies, prosecutors have said, impeded them from getting information from Mr. Mifsud that was important to their investigation.
“Those statements hindered investigators’ ability to effectively question Mifsud when he was interviewed in the lobby of a Washington hotel on Feb. 10, 2017,” the Mueller report stated. Prosecutors said Mr. Mifsud left the United States on Feb. 11, 2017, and has not returned since.
During his interviews with the special counsel’s investigators, Mr. Mifsud conceded that he introduced Mr. Papadopoulos to two Russian citizens, but he denied that he knew about the hacked emails before they were released,
telling La Repubblica that it was “nonsense.”
He told the Trump campaign that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton. But Republicans suggested he might have been working for Western intelligence agencies.
www.nytimes.com
stop beating a dead horse
Democrats said the Republican effort to turn attention away from Mr. Trump by focusing on Mr. Mifsud would not work.
“It is ludicrous on the face of it,” Representative Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut, said after the testimony concluded. “The Republicans have 1,000 conspiracy theories, and this is one of the more fantastical ones.”