(CNN) Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos expressed doubt Saturday that the woman he met in London in September 2016 -- who reportedly posed as an academic's assistant to try to seduce him and determine whether the Trump campaign had ties to Russia -- was an FBI agent.

Papadopoulos' comments made to CNN's Michael Smerconish on Saturday come following reporting from the New York Times -- published on Friday and citing people familiar with the operation -- that said the woman he met in London two months before the 2016 presidential election was a federal investigator sent by the FBI to determine whether Trump's 2016 presidential campaign was working with Russia. Papadopoulos spent two weeks in prison for lying to federal investigators , an early charge in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

Papadopoulos said that when academic and FBI informant Stefan Halper -- who he said he did not previously know -- flew him to London under the guise of consulting work on the Middle East energy business, Halper arranged for Papadopoulos to go out for drinks with his assistant, a Turkish woman who he said was named Azra Turk.

"I was a little suspicious about it because I didn't have any understanding why I was meeting a different person, especially a Turkish national," Papadopoulos told Smerconish. "I mean that's why I disabused the claim that this was some sort of FBI agent."

The woman "barely spoke English, she was very flirty," Papadopoulos said, and probed on two subjects -- his energy sector experience in the Middle East and "Trump and Russia."

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