George Papadopoulos

George Demetrios Papadopoulos ( born August 19, 1987) is an author and former member of the foreign policy advisory panel to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign.

George Papadopoulos was born August 19, 1987, at Swedish Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, to Greek immigrants parents originally from Thessaloniki.

His father, Antonis, was heavily involved in the local politics of the Greek-American community and is the former president of the Pan-Macedonian Union of the United States.

His mother, Kate (Kiki), was born in Greece, but later moved to Worcester, Massachusetts.

He grew up in Lincolnwood, Illinois and attended Niles West High School in Skokie, Illinois, graduating in 2005.

He then attended DePaul University, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in political science in 2009.

He earned a Master of Science in Security Studies in 2010 at University College London, writing his thesis about "deleterious effects of low governance and state capacity levels in the Middle East" in November 2010.

He speaks Arabic, English, French and Greek.

In 2010, following the rupture in relations between Turkey and Israel due to the Mavi Marmara incident, Papadopoulos became involved in eastern Mediterranean energy development projects and policy focusing upon the relations of Israel, Cyprus, Greece, also known as the Energy Triangle.

Papadopoulos worked an unpaid intern at the Hudson Institute from 2011 to 2015 specializing in the eastern Mediterranean and later worked as a contract research assistant to a senior fellow at the institute.

Richard Weitz, a Wikistrat "expert", managed George Papadopoulos while he was at the Hudson Institute.

According to CNN, Papadopoulos described himself as an "oil, gas, and policy consultant" on his LinkedIn profile.

In 2014, Papadopoulos authored op-ed pieces in several Israeli publications.

In one, published in the Arutz Sheva, Papadopoulos argued that the U.S. should focus on its "stalwart allies" Israel, Greece, and Cyprus to "contain the newly emergent Russian fleet"; in another, published in Ha'aretz, he contended that Israel should exploit its natural gas resources in partnership with Cyprus and Greece rather than Turkey.

On 19 October 2015, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to allow major concessions for Gazprom to develop the Leviathan gas field; Putin told Netanyahu, "We will make sure there will be no provocation against the gas fields by Hezbollah or Hamas. Nobody messes with us."

Investigative reporting conducted by Ha'aretz in 2017 showed that Papadopoulos co-authored an expert opinion, on behalf of the Hudson Institute that was delivered to the Israeli Energy Ministry on June 20, 2015, about a proposed plan to develop the Leviathan offshore gas fields in Israel's territorial waters.

Money was donated to Hudson by the CEO of Noble Energy and other staffers of the company.

Houston-based Noble Energy is heavily invested in Israeli gas with the Israeli energy group Delek Drilling.

Noble Energy was initially given permission on December 17, 2015, to develop the Leviathan gas field worth up to $120 billion (~$ in ).

In September 2015, Papadopoulos left the Hudson Institute and joined Energy Stream, a London energy consultancy, as an oil and gas consultant for four months before joining Ben Carson's presidential campaign.

Beginning in December 2015 and while living in London, Papadopoulos served on the National Security and Foreign Policy Advisory Committee for Ben Carson's campaign for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.

While living in London, Papadopoulos first reached out to Donald Trump's campaign on August 4, 2015, expressing interest in “an advisory role to Mr. Trump on matters of energy security and U.S. policy in the Eastern Mediterranean." Further unsuccessful emails in an effort to obtain a position in the Trump campaign followed, but in December 2015, with the Ben Carson campaign on the verge of suspending, Papadopoulos believed that parts of the Carson campaign would be assumed by the Trump campaign, and decided to pursue this route.

Papadopoulos sent his résumé to the Ben Carson presidential campaign, which hired him as a foreign policy adviser for two-and-a-half months, December 2015 through mid-February 2016.

Sam Clovis, who at the time was national co-chairman of Trump's campaign team, approved him as an unpaid adviser.

In his campaign job interview via Skype from London on March 6, Clovis allegedly told Papadopoulos that one of the campaign's foreign policy priorities was to improve U.S.–Russia relations, though Clovis later denied saying that.

He lived in Europe until March 2016 when he moved back to Chicago.

In early February 2016, he began work as a director at the London Centre of International Law Practice but left the Carson campaign in mid-February 2016 and moved from London to Chicago in March 2016.

Former Trump campaign adviser Michael Caputo described Papadopoulos’ role in the Trump's 2016 election campaign as a volunteer “coffee boy”.

Employed at that time with the London Centre of International Law Practice (LCILP), on March 12, 2016, Papadopoulos was part of an LCILP visiting delegation to the Link Campus University in Rome, a university associated with Italian intelligence agencies.

There he met Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese academic with alleged ties to Russian intelligence who was at the time a teacher at the University of Stirling in Scotland.

On March 21, 2016, in an interview with the editorial board of The Washington Post, Trump announced Papadopoulos as one of his campaign's foreign policy advisers.

Trump, reading from a list, said: "He's an oil and energy consultant, excellent guy."

On March 24, Papadopoulos met with Mifsud in London.

On October 5, 2017, Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to a felony charge of making false statements to FBI agents about the timing and the possible significance of his contacts in 2016 relating to U.S.–Russia relations and the Trump presidential campaign.

In 2018, he served twelve days in federal prison, then was placed on a 12-month supervised release.

During his supervised release from prison, he participated in the filming of a still-unreleased docuseries.

In March 2019, Papadopoulos released his book, Deep State Target: How I Got Caught in the Crosshairs of the Plot to Bring Down President Trump.

In 2019, Papadopoulos announced he had joined the board of advisors for the medical cannabis company C3, which manufactures the marijuana pill Idrasil.

He was pardoned by Trump in December 2020.

He ran in the March 2020 primary for the November general election to replace the U.S. representative Katie Hill in California's 25th congressional district, after Hill resigned, but lost, receiving 2.3% of the vote.