The saga of George Papadopoulos, his wife, and Robert Mueller just got even stranger

| 11:15 pm EDT August 20, 2018
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In the past week since Special Counsel Robert Mueller formally recommended a prison sentence of up to six months for Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos, we’ve seen quite a bit of noise – and some implied threats – coming out of Papadopoulos’ camp. Even as his wife publicly called on him to rip up his plea deal and take his chances at trial, he cryptically tweeted “Tick tock,” suggesting that he was indeed considering blowing up the deal and trying to create a mess of controversy for Mueller. Now Papadopoulos is supposedly planning to back down after all, even as his wife continues taking things in the opposite direction.

Attorneys for George Papadopoulos plan to go ahead with the plea deal sentencing hearing on September 7th, and they plan to make the argument that he shouldn’t receive any prison time for the “mistakes of judgement” that he made during the course of his plea deal. This is according to reporting this morning from the Chicago Sun Times newspaper. So why is this important?

By going through with the plea deal sentencing, Papadopoulos is by default agreeing to continuing plea deal. Further, by arguing in court that his “mistakes” shouldn’t be held against him, he’s stipulating to Robert Mueller’s assertion that he did indeed screw up certain aspects of his plea deal. Yet even after this newspaper story rant his morning, George’s wife Simona Papadopoulos spent the day continuing to tweet strange conspiracy theories, as she’s been doing all week. She then appeared on the Sean Hannity show tonight and claimed that George is being punished because he wasn’t willing to tell Mueller the lies that Mueller wanted to hear.

For his part, George Papadopoulos simply posted this tweet this afternoon: “Been a hell of a year. Decisions.” It’s difficult to tell what’s going on here. Is Simona trying to talk George out of his plea deal? Is George the one pushing Simona to say all these things, in the hope of muddying the waters? Who knows? But this is a surreal spectacle for someone who’s just eighteen days away from a sentencing hearing that could land him in prison.