George Papadopoulos, Trump adviser and felon, plans Orange County congressional run in 2020
Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, who was released from federal prison last week after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI during its Russia probe, said in an interview Friday that he’s planning to run for Congress in Orange County in 2020.
Papadopoulos, 32, was the first adviser of President Donald Trump to be sentenced in the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Papadopoulos lied to federal investigators about his contacts with a suspected Russian operative who told the Trump adviser that the Russian government possessed a trove of emails that could harm Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. Papadopoulos spent 12 days in a Wisconsin prison and was released Dec. 7.
Papadopoulos announced his congressional aspirations in an interview with The Daily Telegraph.
He told the publication that he’d always intended to use the Trump campaign as a springboard to launch his own political career.
Papadopoulos said he recently moved to Los Angeles from Chicago and was planning to run for an undisclosed Orange County House district, saying he’d already spoken to potential donors.
“Now that Los Angeles is home I just have to find a little Republican enclave somewhere in this part of the country and run there,” Papadopoulos told Telegraph in his first post-release interview.
Papadopoulos’s April 2016 interaction with the suspected Russian operative, a London-based professor named Joseph Mifsud, served as the impetus for the FBI’s ongoing probe into connections between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. Federal prosecutors said that Papadopoulos’s false statements to the FBI in Jan. 2017 hindered the agency’s investigation and allowed Mifsud to leave the United States and avoid questioning.
Papadopoulos, now a felon, told The Telegraph that his crime shouldn’t “preclude my future in politics in this country.”
“We all make mistakes,” Papadopoulos said.
Former state GOP Executive Director Jon Fleischman, now a Newport Beach political consultant, described news of Papadopoulos’s Orange County political aspirations as “totally random and bizarre.”
Fleischman has been a political ally of outgoing Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and of Scott Baugh, the former county GOP chief seen as another possible 2020 Orange County House candidate.
“It’s a free country, so (Papadopoulos) can run wherever he wants,” Fleischman said. “But I don’t think he’s going to have a very compelling case to make to Republican primary voters.”
Orange County, once a conservative bastion, is set to be represented by all Democrats in Congress next year. Papadopoulos is the first Republican to announce his intention to run for an Orange County House seat in 2020.
There is no federal law barring felons from serving in congress. And under California law, a felon loses his or her right to vote only while they’re in prison or parole.
Under the terms of his sentence, Papadopoulos still must complete one year of probation, serve more than 200 hours of community service, and pay a $9,500 fine.