Oh my, my, my. As I watched the George Papadopoulis timeline as Ali Velshi laid it out, my instincts were confirmed: The June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower with the Russian lawyer peddling dirt -- the one Trump Junior took with Manafort and Kushner -- had to have been engineered by the guy Trumpkins are calling a "coffee boy" now.
Here is Velshi's excellent timeline and commentary:
Early March, 2016: After joining the Trump campaign as an advisor in early March 2016, Papadopoulos was in contact with an overseas professor, someone he quote understood to have substantial ties to Russian government officials.
Those communications began around March of 2016 when he joined the campaign. This professor that he talked to only seemed to be interested in Papadopoulos because of this new status with the campaign.
March 24, 2016: "Papadopoulos e-mailed an unnamed campaign supervisor and several members of the foreign policy team to inform them that he had met with the professor, and with a female Russian national, described as Putin's niece. Though authorities determine the woman is not in fact the Russian president's niece."
March 31, 2016: One week later, here's the picture. A lot of people say when you appear in a picture with somebody it doesn't mean anything. This is actually a meeting of a campaign team. There's Donald Trump, Papadopoulos, Jeff Sessions. He sat in that meeting with the president.
April 25, 2016: On April 25th, about a month later, Papadopoulos e-mailed a senior policy adviser for the campaign telling them quote the Russian invitation by Mr. Putin for Mr. Trump to meet him when he is ready.
April 26, 2016: The professor told Papadopoulos he learned from quote high level Russian government officials that the Russians had dirt. They had thousands of e-mails containing dirt on Hiillary Clinton after the professor met with these high level Russian government officials.
April 27, 2016: The next day, Papadopoulos again e-mailed a senior policy adviser about Trump going to Russia. Have interesting messages coming in from Moscow about a trip when the time is right.
Same day he e-mailed a high-ranking campaign officials to discuss Russia's interest in hosting mr. Trump. Have been receiving a lot of calls over the last month about Putin wanting to host him and the team when the time is right. You are getting a sense of a trend here, right?
May 21, 2016 Papadopoulos e-mailed another high-ranking campaign officials who we now know was Paul Manafort according to two sources familiar with the charges. The e-mail reads Russia has been eager to meet with Mr. Trump for quite some time and have been reaching out to me to discuss.
Manafort took this e-mail and he forwarded it to a colleague without including Papadopoulos. And he says let's discuss. We need someone to communicate that "dt" -- Donald Trump is not doing this trip. It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal.
June 9, 2016: Donald Trump, Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, meet with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and several others at Trump Tower to discuss potential opposition research on Hillary Clinton and the Magnitsky Act.
Mid-June to Mid-August 2016: Papadopoulos pursued this off-the-record meeting between representatives of the Trump campaign and with Putin's office. And with just after the now famous meeting in Trump tower June 9th between the Russians and Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and these Russians,
August 15, 2016: Just after this, the campaign supervisors told Papadopoulos I would encourage you along with another foreign policy adviser to the campaign to make the trip if it is feasible.
January 27, 2017: Papadopoulos was interviewed for the first time by the FBI, lying about his communications, the timing of his communication with this professor.
July, 2017: He was arrested in July.
October 5, 2017: And he pled guilty on October 5th. His plea agreement says the government will inform the sentencing judge of Papadopoulos's cooperation with the investigation, which is going to determine what penalty he pays. They seem to be hanging the idea over him that if he cooperates fully, there may be no sentence whatsoever.
Please stick a pin in the Trump, Jr. meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya right in the middle of all that, which was arranged specifically to obtain Russian "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. That meeting took place IN TRUMP TOWER.
Either there are a lot of coincidences here, or else you can assume that George Papadopoulis was a heck of a lot more than a "coffee boy."
Someone needs to walk Sarah Sanders through this timeline and all the interactions said "coffee boy" had with the Trump campaign and then ask her whether she seriously plans to stick to her story.
By the way, has she lawyered up yet?
