GEORGE Papadopoulos, an embattled former campaign aide who advised US President Donald Trump on foreign policy had visited Cyprus three times as a guest of the public information office (PIO), it has emerged.
Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty last month as part of a federal probe into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US election, had lobbied for energy cooperation between Israel, Greece, and Cyprus, after significant natural gas resources were discovered in Israel.
He is one of three former Trump campaign officials facing criminal charges. Born and raised in Chicago, Papadopoulos is the child of migrants from Thessaloniki, Greece.
Trump last week sought to play down Papadopoulos’ role, tweeting that “few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar.”
Interviews and documents however, showed that Papadopoulos was in regular contact with the Trump campaign’s most senior officials and held himself out as a Trump surrogate as he travelled the world to meet with foreign officials and reporters.
According to the Washington Post, Papadopoulos sat at the elbow of one of Trump’s top campaign advisers, then-Senator Jeff Sessions, during a dinner for campaign advisers weeks before the Republican National Convention.
He met in London in September 2016 with a mid-level representative of the Foreign Office, where he said he had contacts at the senior level of the Russian government.
And he conferred with the foreign minister of Greece at a meeting in New York.
A spokesman for the Greek Embassy said the conversation was conducted as part of a routine effort that the embassy makes to reach out to Greek Americans “hoping they have a sentimental attachment to Greece and that we can connect.”
Israel’s Haaretz reported that Papadopoulos wrote Op-Ed pieces in Israeli news outlets arguing for co-operation between Israel, Greece, and Cyprus in the latter’s development of the Tamar and Leviathan gas fields and avoid excessive cooperation with Turkey.
He was particularly forceful in an article he wrote for the rightist outlet Arutz Sheva in 2014, Haaretz said.
A proposal to build a pipeline to Turkey in order to export gas to Europe, he said “is bereft of the political realities in the region and does not take into account the potentially devastating impact this option can have on Israel’s strategic relations with EU member Cyprus, and by extension, all of Europe” and that “regional economic cooperation between Israel and Cyprus should be the guiding principle that anchors Israel economically to Europe.”
In an interview with Phileleftheros after Trump won the election in 2016, Papadopoulos was presented as the US president’s associate.
He told the newspaper at the time that it was his third consecutive annual visit as a guest of the PIO.
He said he held high level meetings with the companies that were drilling for natural gas in Cyprus “to collect the latest information on issues that we will discuss in Congress this month. They also invited me to speak at an energy seminar organised in Nicosia in the presence of Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides.”
Papadopoulos said he had worked as a researcher at the Hudson Institute for the past five years and they had carried out research on Middle East security and what that meant.
“We are the first think tank that organised a conference in Washington DC in 2013 on USA, Cyprus, Israel, and Greece relations, where ambassadors and members of Congress gave speeches,” he told Phileleftheros.
The Washington Post said officials at the Hudson Institute said he had been an unpaid intern and a researcher under contract to several fellows who were writing a book.
Although he claimed to be “US Representative at the 2012 Geneva International Model United Nations,” officials at that organization said they had no record of him, the paper said.
He also claimed he had delivered the “keynote address” at a leading American-Greek organisation in 2008 — while a student at DePaul University.
Records from the gathering indicate he merely participated in a youth panel with other participants.
In the Cyprus interview, Papadopoulos said the Hudson shaped American political thought for the past 50 years.
It was no coincidence, he said, that two months after the think tank’s call to stop the embargo of US military hardware to Cyprus, an “intense discussion” had opened in the Congress.
He said the Hudson’s aim was to build close co-operation between Cyprus, Greece, Israel, Egypt, and the US, for stability and peace in the Middle East.
Papadopoulos said he was going to analyse the policy to Congress that month.
