Everyone is confused by the length of the George Papadopoulos prison sentence. Here’s what it really means.

| 2:45 am EDT August 18, 2018
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Special Counsel Robert Mueller has formally recommended that George Papadopoulos be sent to prison for up to six months in accordance with his plea deal. Mueller also revealed in court filings that Papadopoulos failed to fully live up to his end of the deal. This has left numerous observers confused, as they’re wondering why Papadopoulos didn’t receive a longer sentence, and if Mueller actually got anything useful from him. However, the context here provides those answers in rather straightforward fashion.

For the past year, legal experts left and right have stated that for a situation like the one that George Papadopoulos was in, the sentencing guideline for his plea deal was zero to six months in prison, depending on how useful he ended up being. So if anyone is surprised that the six month sentence wasn’t longer, it’s only because they weren’t familiar with what the experts were saying. But how do we know if Mueller got anything useful out of this?

The short answer is that if Papadopoulos had fully reneged on his deal, or if he’d been lying about everything all along, Mueller would have ripped up the deal and hit him with all the criminal charges he was originally facing for his role in the Trump-Russia plot. Papadopoulos would be facing several years in prison if his deal were revoked. The mere fact that Papadopoulos is still being allowed to plead out at all, is a clear sign that he gave Mueller something quite valuable, even if he screwed up on his deal in other ways.

Remarkably, we still don’t know precisely who George Papadopoulos gave up in order to get his plea deal. But if you’re looking for clues, start with his supervisors in the Donald Trump campaign, and the campaign officials he was in meetings with. We’ll find out eventually, once Mueller is ready to indict and arrest the bigger fish Papadopoulos flipped on.