Fiancee Of George Papadopoulos Calls Trump A Liar, Says ‘The First Domino’ Has Fallen

First of all, I would love [for] George to learn how to make a coffee, because it’s absolutely out of his skills.

That’s from Simona Mangiante, George Papadopoulos’s Italian fiancee.

You remember Papadopoulos, right? On October 5, George secretly pleaded guilty to making false claims to the FBI, a fact the world wouldn’t learn until October 30.

Subsequently, Donald Trump attempted to throw Papadopoulos under the bus, tweeting the following after learning that George was cooperating with Robert Mueller:

….came to the campaign. Few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar. Check the DEMS!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2017

Yes, “few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George,” and according to a picture Trump shared on his official social media accounts, those “few people” who knew George include Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump:

Needless to say, that image cast considerable doubt on the President’s contention that Papadopolous was just “a low level guy named George” of no consequence to the campaign.

Well sure enough, a slow and steady leak of information over the coming weeks would reveal that Papadopolous was not in fact a nobody.

One particularly damning revelation came early last month when Bloomberg reported that one of George’s e-mails seemed to suggest that “top Trump campaign officials agreed to a pre-election meeting with representatives of Russian President Vladimir Putin.”

Ultimately, Sam Clovis (who supervised Papadopolous), was forced to give up on his push to be the Department of Agriculture’s chief scientist after unsealed court documents described emails between Clovis and Papadopoulos that found ol’ Sam responding “Great work” when George talked about his interactions with Kremlin surrogates.

Well as you can see from the picture above, Jeff Sessions also attended the meeting with Papadopolous and that would land the Attorney General in more hot water. Recall this from CNN:

Candidate Donald Trump did not dismiss the idea of arranging a meeting with Russia’s president when it was suggested in a meeting with his campaign foreign policy advisers last year, according to a person in the room. The idea was raised by George Papadopoulos as he introduced himself at a March 2016 meeting of the Republican candidate’s foreign policy advisers, according to a court filing.

“He didn’t say yes and he didn’t say no,” the official said, declining to be more specific about Trump’s response to Papadopoulos.

But the chairman of Trump’s national security team, then Alabama senator and now attorney general Jeff Sessions, shut down the idea of a Putin meeting at the March 31, 2016, gathering, according to the source. His reaction was confirmed with another source who had discussed Session’s role.

Then, in an ill-advised and widely lampooned interview with MSNBC, Carter Page said he “might have been on email threads with Papadopoulos where Russia may have come up from time to time.”

On November 3, Trump made the absurd contention that he “couldn’t remember” the meeting depicted in the picture shown above despite having made it into a literal #MAGA poster.

President Trump on March 2016 meeting with George Papadopoulos: “I don’t remember much about that meeting.” https://t.co/qti70sRnSR pic.twitter.com/c3NWYUGzVh

— CNN (@CNN) November 3, 2017

Of course the problem here for Trump is that “low-level” Papadopoulos “popped” up all over the damn place in the lead-up to the election including, hilariously, on a American Jewish Committee panel discussion with none other than Bob Corker:

Even funnier than the fact that George (seated on the far left) was on a panel discussion with the GOP Senator who has become a thorn in Trump’s (engorged) side, is the fact that the event shown in that picture was called “Defining America’s Role in Global Affairs.” You can’t make this shit up.

Apparently, Corker gave the introductory speech and then left, according to a spokesman for the Tennessee Senator who spoke to NBC.

But that’s not the only place Papadopoulos popped up.

As NBC goes on to note in the piece linked above, “in late September, just six weeks before Election Day, he gave an interview as a Trump campaign official to the Russian Interfax News Agency, where he said that Trump will ‘restore the trust’ between the U.S. and Russia’” and then about four months later, “he met with Israeli leaders during the inauguration as a foreign policy adviser for the newly-sworn in president.”

You get the idea. Papadopoulos was not just “a low-level guy named George.” And confirming that on Friday in her first interview is the above-mentioned Simona Mangiante who spoke about Papadopoulos to George Stephanopoulos.

Mangiante told ABC that she decided to speak out to counter Trump’s claims that Papadopoulos was a “young, low level volunteer.” Or in the words of campaign adviser Michael Caputo, a “coffee boy.”

He’s no “coffee boy.” Papadopoulos' fiancee tells me he was in contact with Bannon, Flynn and others during the campaign and tells me that she has seen the emails that can “illustrate” that. https://t.co/ndBgkJHEoz pic.twitter.com/1x0EtN73C3

— George Stephanopoulos (@GStephanopoulos) December 8, 2017

Here’s ABC:

“First of all, I would love George to learn how to make a coffee, because it’s absolutely out of his skills,” she joked. “George is a remarkable young man with incredible experience in the field of energy and oil policies. This experience led him to get into the campaign and to advise the president at only 28 years old.”

Mangiante said Papadopoulos “set up meetings with leaders all over the world” for senior campaign officials. He was “constantly in touch with high-level officials in the campaign,” she added. That included direct communication with now-former senior Trump advisers Steve Bannon and Michael Flynn, Mangiante said, adding that she had seen correspondence supporting the assertion.

Neither Bannon nor an attorney for Flynn responded to a request for comment Thursday.

She was also brought in for questioning by the FBI but was not forced to appear before a grand jury.

“I must say that they have been fair,” she said of investigators. “And I was happy to give my contribution.”

Asked what the title of Papadopoulos’s upcoming memoir would be, she responded: “The first domino”…

“The First Domino” — that’s how George Papadopoulos' fiancee would title his upcoming memoir. https://t.co/ndBgkJHEoz pic.twitter.com/qurPF85Dmp

— George Stephanopoulos (@GStephanopoulos) December 8, 2017

Nothing further.