How A Putin Ally Met Key Trump Officials And Worried European Intelligence
European counterintelligence officers say Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos's meetings with Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos before and after the election should alarm US investigators. And Papadopoulos isn't the only official he managed meetings with.
Posted on March 26, 2018, at 2:01 p.m.
Mitch Prothero
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Vera Bergengruen
BuzzFeed News Reporter
George Papadopoulos (third from left) and Panos Kammenos (fourth from left) at the St. Regis Hotel in
Washington, DC, on the eve of Donald Trump's inauguration.
When Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, attention fell on his meetings with a mysterious Maltese professor named Joseph Mifsud, who, according to court documents, told Papadopoulos that the Russians had thousands of Hillary Clinton emails — nearly two months before the Democrats themselves knew that their computers had been hacked.
But European security officials say another set of meetings Papadopoulos held in Europe in the months before and after the 2016 election should alarm US investigators. That’s because the person with whom he met, Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos, is known to be close to Russian President Vladimir Putin — a relationship that goes beyond Greece’s traditional ties to Russia through the Eastern Orthodox Church and a growing relationship brought on by Greece’s economic collapse.
“Like much of the Greek economic and security establishment, the Ministry of Defense is considered compromised by Russian intelligence,” said one NATO military intelligence officer, who like the others in this story declined to be identified by name because of the sensitivity of his work. “Specifically, we have been officially warned against briefing Greek ministry representatives about sensitive intelligence operations involving the Russians” because of concerns about his apparent links to their intelligence services.
What Papadopoulos and the Greek defense minister discussed during their meetings is unknown. The Greek Defense Ministry did not respond to requests for comment, and Papadopoulos declined to comment, referring questions to his attorneys, who said they could not discuss Papadopoulos’s interactions with Kammenos or his cooperation with special counsel Robert Mueller.
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https://www.buzzfeed.com/mitchprothero/how-a-putin-ally-met-key-trump-officials-and-worried?utm_term=.hf90AVkxG#.riwo7v2Vw
= new reply since forum marked as read
on the move and in the mix bigly, who knew?? And he’s, you know...made a plea deal with Mr. Mueller & Co., so, yeah, TERRIFIC NEWS!!
Oh look, from link:
Papadopoulos also was not the only Trump-connected figure who met Kammenos. Over the weekend of Trump’s inauguration, Kammenos was photographed at social events talking with incoming chief of staff Reince Priebus and Trump political adviser Steve Bannon. That was in contrast to Kammenos’s visit to Washington in 2015, when President Barack Obama’s secretary of defense, Ash Carter, canceled an already scheduled meeting with him. Photographs showing Priebus and Bannon with Kammenos were distributed by the Greek Defense Ministry.
How substantive those encounters — widely reported in Greece at the time — were is unclear. The Greek Defense Ministry portrayed them as private meetings where Kammenos discussed Greek foreign policy goals, and photos of Kammenos and Priebus, shot on Jan. 19 and Jan. 21, 2017, appear to show the two in intense conversation. Priebus declined to comment.
Bannon, Priebus, and Kammenos Jan 21 2917