WASHINGTON, DC — As former Trump campaign Chairman Paul Manafort turned himself in to law enforcement Monday morning on 12 criminal charges, the FBI revealed that another of the president's ex-staffers has pleaded guilty to lying to investigators and impeding the federal probe into Russian intervention in the 2016 election.

George Papadopoulos, who served as one of Trump's foreign policy advisers in 2016, has admitted to covering up contacts with people he believed worked for the Russian government during his time on the campaign, case files show. While Manafort's indictment on charges of conspiracy and financial crimes garnered most of the attention Monday morning, Papadopoulos's confession could be an even bigger break in the Trump-Russia story. It casts serious doubt on the president's claim that there was "no collusion" between his campaign and the Kremlin.

"Through his false statements and omissions, [the] defendant ... impeded the FBI's ongoing investigation into the existence of any links or coordination between individuals associated with the Campaign and the Russian government's efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election," according to the FBI document.

Preet Bharara, a former U.S. attorney who was fired by the president, said that Papadopoulos's plea "portends more charges to come."



During a plea agreement hearing, special counsel lawyer Aaron Zelinsky told the judge of Papadopoulos's charges: "[T]here's a large-scale ongoing investigation of which this case is a small part." The White House did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

Also See: What you need to know about the Manafort-Gates indictment

The documents go on to say that Papadopoulos sent an email to a "high-ranking Campaign official" about Russia's interest in meeting with Trump. That official, unnamed in the documents, forwarded that email along to another official and added: "Let[']s discuss. We need to communicate that DT is not doing these trips. It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal."

The case files also reveal that Papadopoulos met in April of 2016 with a professor who said that he was in contact with Russian government officials. Papadopoulos said that he learned that "the Russians had emails of [Hillary] Clinton" and "they have thousands of emails."