“THIS ISN’T BEING COVERED ANYWHERE IN AMERICA”
by Sharon Rondeau
(May 5, 2019) — In opening his show at 9:00 a.m. EDT Friday, radio host Dan Bongino reveled over the fact that The New York Times reported that a “spy” was dispatched to London in 2016 to pump then-Trump informal campaign adviser George Papadopoulos about the campaign’s relationships with Russians.
The Times reported Thursday that a woman from the U.S., presented to Papadopoulos as an assistant to Cambridge University professor emeritus Stefan Halper, was an FBI asset, although Papadopoulos believes she was sent by the CIA.
Her name was said to be “Azra Turk,” although it is believed it might be a pseudonym.
“Nobody now is denying what I’ve been telling you for two years, that the government tried to entrap George Papadopoulos, who was a member of the Trump team, and spy on him, and Carter Page, and others. Nobody,” said Bongino, who wrote the book “Spygate: The Attempted Sabotage of Donald J. Trump.”
He added, however, that The Times was attempting to tell the story from the FBI’s vantage point, by stating that the “spy” was sent as a result of the FBI’s “frantic” efforts to determine the extent of Russian influence on the 2016 presidential campaign.
“This was entrapment from the start,” Bongino said animatedly. “They now admit Papadopoulos was spied on and that in September, he was lured overseas to London. You know what, Joe? Let’s get the story from Papadopoulos,” who lives in Los Angeles.
Papadopoulos almost immediately answered the call and provided an interview.
He said that “Turk” invited him to a bar, conducted herself flirtatiously, and “within 20 minutes” asked him “about this Russia stuff,” which Papadopoulos said was “absurd.” “Whatever she was trying to extract from me clearly, in my opinion, was maybe having me slip up, say something just to impress her and hurt the campaign,” he told Bongino. He said that by September 2016, when he and Turk met, British intelligence had “no reason” to believe that Papadopoulos had any Russian contacts.
According to Papadopoulos during the call, another individual who approached him earlier in 2016, Joseph Mifsud, was not a “Russian asset,” but rather working with “Western intelligence.”
Mifsud asked to meet with Papapdopoulous at the Link Campus in Rome in April 2016, when he told Papadopoulos that the Russians possessed “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.
He then declared a “huge bombshell” which he said is being covered in the Italian press but not in the U.S. (8:28). “Mifsud’s lawyer is going out with new information about how people were prodding Mifsud to set me up….This isn’t being covered anywhere in America…this university, Link Campus, is now currently under investigation, and when President Trump called the Italian prime minister last week, it wasn’t a coincidence, by the way, because there are new investigations now being launched by the Italian parliament into Mifsud and into this spy school, Link Campus, to see if Italian intelligence was coordinating with friendlies or even the FBI itself when Mifsud was interacting with me…”
Papadopoulos, 31, is the author of “Deep State Target.”