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Report Says Kammenos Aided Now-Indicted Trump Adviser Papadopoulos

A story on the “rise and dramatic fall” of George Papadopoulos, a former minor advisor to then-candidate Donald Trump linked the Greek-American to provocative Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos, now caught up in a shadowy arms deal to Saudi Arabia.

Papadopoulos pleaded guilty on Oct. 5 to one count of lying to FBI agents about the nature of his interactions with “foreign nationals” who he thought had close connections to senior Russian government officials.

Papadopoulos is the first person to face criminal charges that cite interactions between Trump campaign associates and Russian intermediaries during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Papadopoulos was a member of the campaign’s foreign policy team. But Trump aides have said he played a limited role in the campaign and no access to Trump.

Papadopoulos, an energy consultant who was an adviser to President Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016, has emerged as a figure tied to the ongoing probe into Russian connections after emails showed he offered to set up a meeting with Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin.

The Washington Post said the little-known Papadopoulos, who, despite having little experience was named a foreign policy adviser later to Trump, sent the campaign foreign policy team an email three days after he was appointed that said: “Meeting with Russian Leadership – Including Putin.”

Papadopoulos, offered to set up “a meeting between us and the Russian leadership to discuss US-Russia ties under President Trump,” telling them his Russian contacts welcomed the opportunity,according to internal campaign emails read to the newspaper.

Kammenos is leader of the pro-austerity, marginal, jingoistic Independent Greeks (ANEL) who are junior partners in the coalition government led by the Radical Left SYRIZA has been a loose cannon, free to do as he wants because Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras needs the tiny party’s votes to have a majority in Parliament.

The Post called Kammenos a “pro-Russian Greek nationalist who bragged often of his insider Moscow connections,” and tried to play an influential role when Putin came to Greece last year.

The Post said Kammenos “would receive a second key visitor that day, but with considerably less fanfare … Not yet 30 years old, George Papadopoulos had been unknown in Greece — and everywhere else — only two months before.

“But suddenly, just as Putin arrived, he was in Athens, quietly holding meetings across town and confiding in hushed tones that he was there on a sensitive mission on behalf of his boss, Donald Trump.”

Before pleading guilty in Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, Papadopoulos was a “critical interlocutor” to Trump’s team in Greece and was said to be close to Kammenos, the paper said.

“Before his spectacular fall … (Papadopoulos received) access to officials at the highest levels of the Greek government, many of whom shared links to Russia and sympathies that would be unusual in other Western capitals,” the paper said.

MR. BIG SHOT

“Kammenos, in particular, stood out both for his pro-Russian views and his determination to forge a bond with the young Trump adviser. ‘Papadopoulos was totally unknown. But then Kammenos took him by the hand and promoted him everywhere,’ (said Adonis Georgiadis, Vice-President of Greece’s center-right New Democracy party,”) the report said.

It went on that, “In short order, Papadopoulos had soon had meetings not only with the Defense Minister, but also with Greece’s Foreign minister, its President and a former prime minister . . . All are considered relatively pro-Russian.”

At the time, Papadopoulos was working “aggressively” to broker a meeting between Putin and Trump, the report went on.

“Although Papadopoulos’ plea deal focused on his contacts with an obscure and mysterious Maltese professor … Greek politicians and analysts say his best and most obvious path to Moscow would have run through Athens,” the report added.

Thanos Dokos, Director General of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy told the paper that, “If I were in his shoes, I would have thought, ‘Can my Greek friends help me make the Moscow connection? It would make sense.’”

The story paired Kammenos’ sense of self-importance with his link to Papadopoulos, calling the Defense Minister a pro-Russian Greek nationalist who bragged often of his insider Moscow connections and noting he met the Greek-American adviser later in the same day after greeting Putin.

While Trump has played down his association with Papadopoulos and distanced himself, the Post wrote that in Greece he was regarded as a crucial go-between from Athens to Washington.

LIKE A MOVIE

“He may have carried on like ‘a second-rate actor in a political thriller,’ as one acquaintance described his manner. But when he bragged that he had helped Trump win the presidency, many here believed it,” and Papadopoulos got red-carpet treatment, wined and dined by business leaders and even being a judge at an island beauty contest.

More importantly, he got preferential and deferential treatment from high-level government figures, many with links to Russia, such as Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias, a Stalinist in the ruling Radical Left SYRIZA, as well as other with Russian sympathies, the story said.

“Kammenos, in particular, stood out both for his pro-Russian views and his determination to forge a bond with the young Trump adviser,” the story added.

Papadopoulos, it said, had a thin resume and built himself up to be something he wasn’t and tried to cultivate powerful friends and insert himself as a tie to Russia, the Kremlin and Putin, indicating he was boasting beyond his weight.

There wasn’t any tip-off even in the close-knit world of Greek and Greek-American international relations experts despite Papadopoulos being an unknown mystery man who started appearing like Zelig next to top Trump figures and the candidate.

His aim, he told associates, was to get a job on a U.S. presidential campaign and to work in the White House despite being so green in politics almost no one knew him or had heard of him.

Dokos, who heads one of the most prominent Greek foreign policy think tanks, said he met Papadopoulos because he was the assistant to a researcher with the Washington-based Hudson Institute who was conducting interviews in Athens. “He was basically serving as the note taker,” Dokos said.
Kammenos happened two years later to be in Washington and meet Papadopoulos at a meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Kammenos was a pariah in the White House of President Barack Obama because, as Defense Minister and leader of a tiny party with nine votes in a 300-member Parliament and around 1 percent of the vote, he was both insignificant and a braggart known as a loose cannon who shot off his mouth and was provocatively undiplomatic in international relations calling for cool and poise, such as the time he said Greece would unleash jihadists among refugees in the country on the European Union unless the country’s creditors backed off on austerity demands. His ties to Putin also made him suspect.
During Greece’s crushing economic crisis, Kammenos – who, like Tsipras, reneged on anti-austerity promises once in power – said the country could turn to Russia as an economic savior before Putin rejected that notion. Kammenos also wanted an end to European Union sanctions on Russia over its role in the Ukrainian crisis and tied himself to other pro-Russian businesss leaders in Greece.
“He’s been one of the strongest Putin supporters in Greece,” said Georgiadis.

TRUMP BABY, TRUMP!

Kammenos publicly embraced Papadopoulos on social media and introduced around Athens during late spring 2016, seeming to tie his wagon to Trump.“Papadopoulos was totally unknown. But then Kammenos took him by the hand and promoted him everywhere,” Georgiadis said.

“He would have wanted to show Papadopoulos that he had good ties with the Russians and he would have wanted to show the Russians that he had good contacts with the Americans,” Georgiadis said.
Kammenos would not talk to the The Post and lawyers for Papadopoulos said they would not comment on his meetings with Greek officials.

Others who met with Papadopoulos around that time described him as acting as though he were on a secret mission, refusing to confirm the location of meetings until half an hour before they began, the detailed report added.

“Every so often, he would lower his voice so as not to be overheard or drop hints of major contacts,” Alexis Papachelas, editor of the well-regarded Greek daily Kathimerini, later wrote of his meeting with Papadopoulos.
Soon after Papadopoulos was named to Trump’s campaign, he reached out to the Rev. Alex Karloutsos, a senior official with the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America and an influential player in the Greek American community, who helped him make contacts in Greece before feeling the young man was out of his league in high-level circles.

“He was caught up in the euphoria. ‘No one knew me, then everybody knew me,’ ” Karloutsos said. “He loved being in the limelight.”

Within hours of Trump’s victory, Kammenos tweeted his congratulations to the President-elect — along with a picture of Papadopoulos and a note saying the young Greek American was “now important for Greece.”

When Papadopoulos returned to Greece the next month, he told Marianna Kakaounaki, an investigative reporter for Kathimerini, that he had “a blank check” for any job he wanted in the Trump administration because of his services to the campaign.

“Everyone knows I helped him (get) elected, now I want to help him with the Ppresidency,” Papadopoulos boasted in a text message.

When prominent Greeks and Greek Americans gathered at Washington’s Metropolitan Club for a party the night before Trump’s inauguration, Kammenos and Papadopoulos were both there to celebrate.

Eight days later, Papadopoulos was interviewed by the FBI — and lied, according to his plea agreement, about the timing and nature of his interaction with the Maltese professor. There would be no White House job. In both Athens and Washington, Papadopoulos virtually disappeared from view, scooped up by the FBI before he could, as he told friends, move to Greece.

Source:

https://www.thenationalherald.com/184607/report-says-kammenos-aided-now-indicted-trump-adviser-papadopoulos/#comment-18811