Former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos hailed Breitbart News and other conservative news media outlets for being “truth-seeking,” for not falling for what he called psychological operations, or “psy-ops,” to push a narrative of Russian collusion.

He said in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News on Thursday:

I would sit back sometimes, and I would think, I’ve never been to Russia, I have no Russian friends, never met a Russian official in my entire life. In fact, throughout my entire professional career at the Hudson Institute and even after, as an energy consultant abroad, all my work was actually dedicated to undermining Russian influence and interests throughout the world. Yet I find myself somehow as Patient Zero of a Russian conspiracy. And that was the moment when I realized how dominant and how manipulative psy-ops are and unfortunately the media in many ways was complicit in this media disinformation campaign and that’s a travesty, and platforms like Breitbart are doing the right thing by not spreading fake news. I know Breitbart was always trying to find the truth, and that’s why I’m really looking forward to sharing this with Breitbart because you’re one of the platforms that was truth-seeking from the beginning and I don’t think you ever truly believed what the mainstream media was spreading around.

In a new book entitled Deep State Target, Papadopoulos details what he says happened after he signed up to be a foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign in March 2016, and found himself in the middle of a plot by Obama administration law enforcement and intelligence officials to investigate and take down Trump.

The book’s release on Tuesday came just days after Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded his investigation, finding no collusion, conspiracy, or coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.

However, “current and former” officials cited allegations against Papadopoulos as the reason the Federal Bureau of Investigation opened an investigation on the Trump campaign.

Their story reportedly was that a Maltese professor named Joseph Mifsud told Papadopoulos the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails, and Papadopoulos passed that on during a meeting at a bar with Australian diplomat Alexander Downer in London, prompting Downer to tell U.S. officials, and prompting the FBI investigation.

However, Mifsud’s lawyer would later tell CNN and other outlets that the professor was never a Russian agent, but instead working on behalf of Western intelligence.

“Mifsud’s own lawyer, the day before I testified in front of Congress, told the world two things — one, please stop writing about my client as a Russian agent or we will sue you, because he was not a Russian agent when he was interacting with George Papadopoulos, he was working on behalf of Western intelligence, and under the guidance of the FBI,” he told Breitbart News.

In addition, another former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, later revealed that an alleged FBI informant reached out to him before the FBI said they began their investigation based on Papadopoulos and Downer’s conversation. Downer also later said Papadopoulos never mentioned “emails” specifically during their conversation.

Nonetheless, Papadopoulos was investigated for collusion, arrested, jailed, indicted, and pressured by his own lawyers to plead guilty to a count of lying to investigators, as he details to Breitbart News.

Kristina Wong is the Pentagon correspondent for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Twitter at @kristina_wong.