George Demetrios Papadopoulos[3] (/ˌpæpəˈdɒpələs/;[4][5] born August 19, 1987) is an author and former member of the foreign policy advisory panel to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.

[7] In March 2019, Papadopoulos released his book, Deep State Target: How I Got Caught in the Crosshairs of the Plot to Bring Down President Trump.

[13] George Papadopoulos was born August 19, 1987, at Swedish Hospital in Chicago, Illinois,[14] to Greek immigrants parents originally from Thessaloniki.

[15][16] His father, Antonis, was heavily involved in the local politics of the Greek-American community and is the former president of the Pan-Macedonian Union of the United States.

[18] He earned a Master of Science in Security Studies in 2010 at University College London, writing his thesis about "deleterious effects of low governance and state capacity levels in the Middle East" in November 2010.

"[25] Investigative reporting conducted by Ha'aretz in 2017 showed that Papadopoulos co-authored an expert opinion, on behalf of the Hudson Institute that was delivered to the Israeli Energy Ministry on June 20, 2015, about a proposed plan to develop the Leviathan offshore gas fields in Israel's territorial waters.

[28] Beginning in December 2015 and while living in London, Papadopoulos served on the National Security and Foreign Policy Advisory Committee for Ben Carson's campaign for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.

[32][33] In September 2024, reports emerged that George Papadopoulos had joined the editorial board of the website Intelligencer, alongside contributors associated with Kremlin-affiliated media.

[37] Papadopoulos sent his résumé to the Ben Carson presidential campaign, which hired him as a foreign policy adviser for two-and-a-half months, December 2015 through mid-February 2016.

There he met Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese academic with alleged ties to Russian intelligence who was at the time a teacher at the University of Stirling in Scotland.

[39][40] On March 21, 2016, in an interview with the editorial board of The Washington Post, Trump announced Papadopoulos as one of his campaign's foreign policy advisers.

"[50]: 7 [51][52] On May 10, 2016, at London's Kensington Wine Rooms, Papadopoulos allegedly told the Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Alexander Downer, who was accompanied by Australian diplomat Erika Thompson, that "one of the reasons [Trump would win] was that...the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion from Russia that it could assist this process with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Mrs Clinton (and President Obama).

[58][59] Between March and September 2016, Papadopoulos made at least six requests for Trump or representatives of his campaign to meet in Russia with Russian politicians.

[62] Beginning in the spring of 2016, Papadopoulos met several times with Panos Kammenos, a Greek politician who allegedly had numerous close ties to Russian intelligence, Vladimir Putin, and the Kremlin group tasked with interfering in the 2016 United States elections.

[66] In 2009, RISI, which had been an SVR operation, was placed under control of the Russian president with Reshetnikov regularly meeting with Putin and participated in Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections by developing plans of action: for example, with Russian intelligence assets and using a large disinformation campaign, Putin would support Republicans and the Trump campaign and disrupt Democrats and the Clinton campaign, and, if Trump were likely to lose the 2016 election, then Russia would shift its efforts to focus upon voter fraud in the United States in order to undermine the legitimacy of the United States electoral system and the elections.

[71] Mifsud traveled to Moscow in April, and upon his return he told Papadopoulos that Russian government officials were in possession of "thousands of emails" that could be politically damaging to Hillary Clinton.

[71][72] On May 6, Papadopoulos met Alexander Downer, the Australian High Commissioner to Britain in a London bar, and told him about the Clinton emails over drinks.

In other words, Papadopoulos had somehow learned about the hacking operation before the public did and had advance knowledge of the Russian plan to use that information to hurt Clinton's campaign.

"[77] On June 19, Sam Clovis, as Trump national campaign co-chairman, encouraged Papadopoulos to fly to Russia to meet with agents of the Russian Foreign Ministry.

This occurred after Papadopoulos had been told by Joseph Mifsud that Russia had "dirt" on Clinton in the form of thousands of stolen emails that Russia wanted to share with Trump's campaign,[62][54][78][79] but before there was public knowledge of the hacks of the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta's emails, the latter two hacks believed by U.S. intelligence agencies to have been carried out by Russian hackers.

[80] On July 26, after WikiLeaks released the hacked Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails, the Australian government advised American authorities of the encounter between Downer and Papadopoulos.

[40][86][89] The research assistant was an FBI investigator with the pseudonym "Azra Turk", but Papadopoulos later stated that he believed she "was CIA" with ties to "Turkish intel" and was tasked to learn about his work in the Energy Triangle which involves Cyprus-Greece-Israel, and competes with the interests of Northern Cyprus and Turkey.

[42] On January 20, 2017, just hours before Trump was going to be inaugurated, Papadopoulos and incoming White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus met with Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos.

[94] On July 27, 2017, Papadopoulos was arrested upon landing at Washington-Dulles International Airport, placed in handcuffs and leg shackles, and put in a prison cell overnight for his arraignment the following day.

[106][107] Papadopoulos has consistently stated his belief that he was entrapped by people in various government intelligence agencies in order to justify FBI surveillance of the Trump campaign.

"[39] Papadopoulos has claimed that this alleged entrapment was indirectly coordinated via the London Centre for International Law Practice, an organization that hired him and were among the first to find out, in 2016, that he was planning to join the Trump campaign.

[110] Papadopoulos has also pointed to another 2016 meeting, with Stefan Halper, a Cambridge University professor with ties to the FBI and CIA, that he believes was designed to elicit incriminating statements from him.

He officially remains missing, although in April 2019 the Italian newspaper Il Foglio stated that he was still alive and hiding out in an apartment in Rome.

[132] In a September 9 interview on This Week, she said her previous work as a diplomat at the European Parliament could have raised a "red flag" with Mueller's investigation.