Ex-Trump Campaign Adviser Papadopoulos to Report to Prison

WASHINGTON (CN) -  A federal judge refused Sunday to let former President Donald Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos further delay his two-week prison sentence.

Papadopoulos, who was sentenced in September for lying to the FBI in the Russia investigation, is scheduled to begin serving that sentence Monday.

He had sought a postponement of his prison term until an appeals court had ruled in a separate case challenging the constitutionality of special counsel Robert Mueller's appointment.

But in a 13-page opinion released Sunday, U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss said Papadopoulos had waited too long to contest his sentence.

“The time to appeal his conviction or sentence expired on September 25, 2018,” Moss wrote. “Papadopoulos waited until the eleventh hour to seek relief; indeed, he did not file his second motion — the stay request — until the last business day before he was scheduled to surrender to serve his sentence.”

Moss also said that Papadopoulos had agreed not to appeal in most circumstances as part of his plea agreement and the judge said the challenge to Mueller's appointment in the D.C. Circuit was unlikely to be successful.

The judge noted that to date four different federal judges have upheld Mueller's appointment as proper.

His opinion also details the extent of the lies Papadopoulos told the FBI.

According to the filing, he originally told the Mueller investigation an “overseas professor” was “‘a nothing’ and ‘just a guy talk[ing] up connections or something.’”

Papadopoulos He also told the special investigation the professor told him about “thousands of emails,” however the relationship was one-sided with the professor only taking interest in him because of his connection to the Trump campaign.

In truth, however, Papadopoulos “understood that the professor had substantial connections to Russian government officials (and had met with some of those officials in Moscow immediately prior to  telling ... Papadopoulos about the ‘thousands of emails’).”

Indeed, “over a period of  months,” Papadopoulos “repeatedly sought to use the professor’s Russian connections in an  effort to arrange a meeting between the Campaign and Russian government officials," the ruling states.

Papadopoulos’ sentence includes 14 days incarceration, one year of supervised release, 200 hours of community service and a fine of $9,500.

He is one of five Trump campaign officials who have been found guilty of crimes in relation to the Mueller investigation. The others are former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen, former aide Rick Gates and ex-national security adviser Michael Flynn.

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