George Papadopoulos Biography

George Demetrios Papadopoulos was born on August 19, 1987 in the U. S. city of Chicago. His father, Antonios Papadopoulos, originally from the Greek city of Thessaloniki, is a doctor of internal medicine. His mother, Kate Papadopoulos, was also born and raised in Greece, but later moved to Worcester, Massachusetts.

Although not much is known about his siblings, he is known to have at least one brother and one sister. George Papadopoulos grew up in Lincolnwood, attending Niles West High School, located in nearby Skokie, participating in the school’s Hellenic Club.

In 2005, on graduating from school, he entered DePaul University, Chicago. Little is known about his activities here and if he was active in politics, there is no record of it. Papadopoulos was not a very bright student. Richard Farkas, a political science professor at DePaul, later described him as “nondescript”.

In 2009, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from DePaul. He then moved overseas to attend University College London, where he studied Security Studies for one year.

In 2010, he earned a Master of Science in Security Studies. According to his resume, he wrote his thesis on the “deleterious effects of low governance and state capacity levels in the Middle East.”

After earning his degree in 2010, George Papadopoulos might have worked overseas for a short period. Finally, in March 2011, he returned home to work as an unpaid intern at Hudson Institute, providing research assistance on a contractual basis to Wikistrat expert Richard Weitz.

In 2014, he authored several op-ed pieces in Israeli publications, arguing that the U.S. should focus on its allies like Israel, Greece, and Cyprus to "contain the newly emergent Russian fleet". He also co-authored an expert opinion on a plan to develop offshore gas fields found in Israel's territorial waters.

From 2015, George Papadopoulos began to take interest in national politics, sending an email in August to Donald Trump’s office, expressing an interest to work as “an advisory role to Mr. Trump on matters of energy security and U.S. policy in the Eastern Mediterranean”. However, he received no reply.

In September 2015, he left Hudson Institute, thereafter joining Energy Stream, a London energy consultancy, as an oil and gas consultant, working with them for four months only. In December, he joined Ben Carson's presidential campaign as a foreign policy expert, promising to raise donations from the Greek-American community.

Papadopoulos knew that Carson’s campaign would collapse sooner or later and parts of it would be taken up by Mr. Trump. His main intention was to use this route to join Donald Trump’s campaign.

True to his expectation, Carson withdrew from the fray on March 2, 2016. By March 6, Papadopoulos, who was at that time living in London, was approved as an unpaid advisor by Donald Trump’s campaign manager.

On March 12, 2016, he met Maltese academic Joseph Mifsud in Rome. Later in the same month, they met once again in London, where Mifsud introduced him to a woman, whom he claimed to be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s niece.

On March 21, 2016, Donald Trump announced George Papadopoulos’ name as one of his campaign's foreign policy advisers. Shortly, he returned home and began to operate mostly from Chicago.

On March 31, 2016, he joined Trump as well as other members of his campaign team, including then-Sen. Jeff Sessions for a meeting on National Security. There he is believed to have offered to facilitate a foreign policy meeting between Trump and Putin.

In April 2016, Papadopoulos once again traveled to London, where he met Mifsud for the third time. The latter told him that the Russian government had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of Hillary’s emails.

Instead of reporting to the American authorities about the alleged “dirt” on Hillary Clinton, Papadopoulos passed on the information to Alexander Downer, the Australian High Commissioner in London when they met on May 10, 2016. Later on May 26, 2016, he told the same to Greek Foreign Minister, Nikos Kotzias.

From March 2016 to September, he made at least six requests for Trump or his representatives to meet in Russia with Russian politicians. In the meantime, Downer told the American authorities that Papadopoulos knew about Russia's theft of Democratic National Committee emails before it was publicly reported.

Since Papadopoulos was by then known as a senior campaign advisor, FBI launched an investigation into possible connections between Russia and the Trump campaign. Eventually on August 10, 2016, they opened a FARA case under the Crossfire Hurricane umbrella on him.

On January 2017, he was interrogated by FBI agents regarding the Trump campaign’s connection with the Russians. Thereafter, he deleted his Facebook account, containing correspondences with Russians on the advice of his counsel and opened a new one.

On July 27, 2017, George Papadopoulos was arrested from Washington-Dulles International Airport. Placed in handcuffs and leg shackles, he was taken to a prison cell. After his arraignment in the following day, he was released without bail.

On October 5, 2017, he pleaded guilty to making false statements to FBI agents relating to the significance as well as the timing of his contacts with people who claimed to have connection with top Russian officials. The plea became public on October 30, 2017.

On September 7, 2018, he was sentenced to 14 days in prison, 12 months of supervised release, 200 hours of community service and fined $9,500. He began serving his sentence on November 26, 2018, at FCI Oxford in Oxford, Wisconsin, and was released 12 days later on December 7, 2018.

Although initially President Trump dismissed him as "the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar", he came to agree with Papadopoulos's assessment by May 2018. Eventually on December 22, 2020, he was granted full pardon by President Trump.

After being released from jail, Papadopoulos authored a book entitled, Deep State Target: How I Got Caught in the Crosshairs of the Plot to Bring down President Trump. The book was released on March 16, 2019. In the following year, he ran for the Congress, representing California’s 25th District, but lost.

On March 2, 2018, Papadopoulos married Simona Mangiante, an Italian lawyer who used to work for the European Parliament. They are now settled in Los Angeles, where he works as an independent oil, gas and policy consultant.