The New York Times report that the government dispatched an agent guised as a research assistant to meet with then-Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos during the 2016 campaign has given conservatives fodder to bolster their claims that the Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign.
It’s also given Papadopoulos more airtime to spout his conspiracy theories about the federal government, a tear he’s been on since his release from prison after serving 14 days for lying the FBI.
During an interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson on Thursday evening, Papadopoulos discussed the initial meeting he had with a woman who, according to the Times, was operating under the alias of Azra Turk and her associate Stefan Halper. The Times reported that Halper is a longtime FBI informant and that the woman posing as Turk is an investigator.
Yet Papadopoulos said he suspects she’s actually with the CIA, not the FBI.
He told Fox that the meetings were “suspicious” and claimed he understood “right away” that Turk wasn’t actually a research assistant because she was being “flirtatious” with him.
“I went and I met with her and she was very suggestive, as you can understand, younger, very flirtatious, and I right away understood this wasn’t a Cambridge assistant,” he said. “She barely spoke English, and she was very flirty and was trying to do two things. One, to extract information about my professional connections in the Middle East and, two, to see if I had any information that she could potentially extract from me about Trump and Russia, which of course is nonsense.”
The former Trump campaign aide also claimed he thought the British were spying on him at the time as well.
The meeting in question reportedly took place months after Papadopoulos drunkenly talked to an Australian diplomat about the Russians offering to help the Trump campaign — that conversation that is believed to be what sparked the Russia probe.
Papadopoulos claims FBI agent tried to seduce him pic.twitter.com/WjdnXZNY4J
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) May 3, 2019
