To expand on the point, if all is as we understand it, George Papadopolous's plea agreement should allow him to spend in the neighborhood of six months in prison, quite possibly less, conceivably even no time. What he pleaded to carries a maximum sentence of five years.
2/ It seems highly likely he could be indicted for additional crimes. Spending six months in prison would be hell. But much less hellish than 5 years or more. Much less life changing. As @emptywheel just said, what he and Simona appear to be contemplating is legal suicide.
3/ Even by the standards of this nonsensical era it makes no sense. Unless we have one of the following scenarios. 1) He and his wife, rightly or wrongly, think they can curry Trump's favor by adding to the Deep State conspiracy drumbeat and get a pardon. I'm skeptical. But ...
4/ who knows and who knows what they might convince themselves of. 2) Another possibility is that something went wrong. Maybe GP didn't come clean with Mueller's investigators. Maybe he lied or held back information and they've found out. Or maybe he lied, got found out ...
5/ and now he's being forced to come clean and for whatever reason he can't do that. 3) Here's the most elusive possibility, which may be inclusive of 1 and 2. It's always been very unclear who Simona Mangiante actually is. There were serious suspicions in law enforcement ...
6/ about whether she's even really Italian. There are lots of things about her personal story that didn't add up. Remember, the allegedly Russian-intelligence backed guy - Mifsud - who got GP into all this trouble ... well, Simona worked for him. And then they connected ...
7/ later on through LinkedIn. And now they're married. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The heart is a funny of course. Who knows? Who is the protective order aimed at?
