George Papadopoulos insists he doesn’t remember boasting to an Australian ambassador about emails stolen by Russian hackers — but he admitted to “The View” that he should have reported the theft to the FBI.
The former Trump campaign aide appeared on the show Tuesday, four days after he was sentenced as part of his guilty plea to lying to FBI agents investigating Russian election interference.
Papadopoulos lashed out Monday on his Twitter account against Alexander Downer, the former Australian ambassador to the U.K., who reported that the campaign aide had told him over wine that Russia had damaging information on Hillary Clinton.
“That’s the biggest regret I actually have out of this whole situation,” he told the panelists, “was that instead of, you know, allegedly gossiping about it with the Australian Downer, which I have no recollection of doing, and I remember speaking about it with the Greek foreign minister, instead of gossiping and doing what I was doing, I should have gone to the FBI or the U.S. embassy.”
Papadopoulos, who was sentenced to 14 days in jail and fined $13,500, said he did not inform campaign officials about the hacked emails.
“I have been asked this a million times, and here’s the reality,” Papadopoulos said. “The same day I was told about the dirt from, you know, I had a scheduled call with Stephen Miller, who is (now) in the White House. That call never went through, so who knows? If that call went through, I may have told him, but it never went through.”
The co-hosts were skeptical of his claims, but Papadopoulos argued there’s no evidence that he notified the campaign about the stolen emails.
“Let’s not forget I was living in London at the time, right?” Papadopoulos said. “I wasn’t in some sort of headquarters.”
“That doesn’t affect your memory,” said co-host Sunny Hostin.
“What it affects is how I was transmitting information at that time, and it was 99 percent over email at that time,” he said. “So if it would have been sent it would have been done over email, and that has obviously that email has never been discovered because I don’t remember sending it.”
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