The following article by John Bowden was posted on the Hill website January 6, 2018:
The fiancée of a former Trump campaign aide who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI last year revealed in a new interview that she spoke with investigators on Robert Mueller‘s special counsel team.
George Papadopoulos‘s fiancée, Simona Mangiante, told Business Insiderthat she interviewed with Mueller’s team for two hours following a subpoena last year.
“It was shocking to me that they wanted me as a witness, but I have nothing to hide,” she said. “And I think they were happy with the interview.”
Mangiante said that federal investigators asked “a lot of questions about Joseph Mifsud,” a London-based professor who told Papadopoulos in 2016 that Russia had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.
Mangiante, an Italian lawyer who previously worked for the European Parliament, said she met the Trump aide last year over LinkedIn after noticing they had a mutual connection, Mifsud.
Mangiante briefly worked for the London-based professor in 2016 in the months leading up to the election at the London Centre of International Law Practice, according to Business Insider.
It’s unclear if Mifsud personally introduced Papadopoulos to Mifsud, but she told Business Insider that Papadopoulos asked her about Mifsud.
“How do you know him?” Mangiante recalled him asking in the fall of 2016. “What does he do?”
“Not even George really knew anything about him,” Mangiante said.
Mangiante says she was served with a subpoena to interview with Mueller’s team days after Papadopoulos was arrested by FBI agents last July.
“I didn’t know what was going on,” Mangiante said. “So I went to the U.S., and everything changed completely.”
“It was traumatic, and completely unexpected,” she added of her fiancée’s July arrest.
Papadopoulos, a former member of the Trump campaign’s foreign policy team, tried to arrange a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin during the campaign after hearing from Mifsud that the Russian government had a stash of “thousands” of hacked Democratic emails.
Papadopoulos was arrested and charged last year with lying to FBI agents about his contacts with Russia-linked foreign nationals during the election.
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