Former Trump aide George Papadopoulos goes to prison Monday


Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos has been ordered to report to federal prison Monday to serve a two-week sentence. U.S. District Court Judge Randy Moss on Sunday rejected Papadopoulos' bid to delay his sentence with a pair of motions attempting to challenge Special Counsel Robert Mueller's legal authority.
Papadopoulos "has failed to demonstrate that the D.C. Circuit is likely to conclude that the appointment of the special counsel was unlawful," Moss wrote, "and, indeed, he has failed even to show that the appeal raises a 'close question' that 'very well could be decided' against the special counsel."
Mueller sought a six-month jail term for Papadopoulos, but the former campaign aide's lawyers argued for leniency on the ground that his motives were "wrongheaded" but not "sinister." Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI; he lied about his 2016 communications with a British professor who said he had Russian contacts with "dirt" on Hillary Clinton for the Trump campaign.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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