Pretty dramatic presentations at the Papadopoulos sentencing. The judge is on a recess of less than 15m to consider his sentence.
Papadopoulos’s lawyer Thomas Breen said a lot. Most notable maybe, he emphatically bellowed: “The President of the United States hindered this investigation more than George Papadopoulos ever did.”
The judge responded, I’m paraphrasing: Make any argument you want to make today, but I’m very focused on Mr. Papadopoulos.
More Breen, on Papadopoulos getting pummeled in public: “He gets beat up all the time. They call him a traitor, which he’s not. They call him a snitch, which he’s not.”
The Special Counsel’s Office lawyer: “In this case, the defendant deliberately and repeatedly lied to agents of the FBI in an important investigation.”
Court just let out—14 days as you’ve undoubtedly seen. 12 month’s supervised release. 200 hours community service. Judge said he would’ve gotten 30 days but he was impressed w Papadopoulos’s remorse.
For much of the judge’s comments from the bench it seemed that Papadopoulos would get a tougher sentence. The judge called Papadopoulos’s lies to the FBI “a calculated exercise of self interest over the national interest.”
“He was seeking to assist himself in a way that placed his own personal interest above the interest of the United States,” the judge went on. “He was riding very high, as Mr Papadopoulos said to me himself, he had just come from the inauguration of the President of the U.S.”
