Why Was Papadopolous Contacted Out of the Blue by a Man Named Halper, Who In Turn Is a "Close Associate" of a Man Named Dearlove, Who In Turn is a Former MI-6 Colleague of Christopher Steele?

Hmmmm...

Two months before the 2016 election, George Papadopoulos received a strange request for a meeting in London, one of several the young Trump adviser would be offered -- and he would accept -- during the presidential campaign.

The meeting request, which has not been reported until now, came from Stefan Halper, a foreign policy expert and Cambridge professor with connections to the CIA and its British counterpart, MI6.

Halper’s September 2016 outreach to Papadopoulos wasn’t his only contact with Trump campaign members. The 73-year-old professor, a veteran of three Republican administrations, met with two other campaign advisers, The Daily Caller News Foundation learned.

Papadopoulos questioned Halper's motivation for contacting him, according to a source familiar with Papadopoulos' thinking. That's not just because of the randomness of the initial inquiry but because of questions Halper is said to have asked during their face-to-face meetings in London.

According to a source with knowledge of the meeting, Halper asked Papadopoulos: "George, you know about hacking the emails from Russia, right?"

Papadopoulos told Halper he didn't know anything about emails or Russian hacking, the source said and spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign. The professor did not follow up on the line of inquiry.

...

Halper also requested and attended a one-on-one meeting with another senior campaign official, TheDCNF learned. That meeting was held a day or two before Halper reached out to Papadopoulos. Halper offered to help the campaign but did not bring up Papadopoulos, even though he would reach out to the campaign aide a day or two later.

Meanwhile...

Halper is a close associate of Sir Richard Dearlove -- the former MI6 chief.

In December 2016, Halper, Dearlove and espionage historian Peter Morland made international news when they announced they were leaving an organization called the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar due to concerns Russian operatives had infiltrated the group.

Months earlier, in early fall 2016, Dearlove reportedly met with dossier author Steele. Steele sought out Dearlov'’s advice on how to proceed with information he gathered on Trump’s ties to Russia, The Washington Post reported. Former MI6 Moscow station chief Steele had been told Trump campaign members were colluding with Kremlin operatives to release emails stolen from the DNC.

I'll turn you over to Chuck Ross for the rest. It gets a bit knotty, and there aren't any clear answers, but it's interesting as heck why CIA- and MI-6 connected people -- and people connected to previous Republican administrations -- were suddenly interested in talking with an all-but-unknown Trump aide, including about allegedly hacked emails from Russia.

But here's what I'm wondering, if all of this was true: Was this all part of the Fusion operation to "incept" Trump aides with information which could, upon their repeating it, serve as a pretext to get the FBI investigating Trump?

posted by Ace of Spades at 02:38 PM

| Access Comments