Papadopoulos Met with MP Tobias Ellwood Multiple Times

The meetings happened in New York City and London.

George Papadopoulos met with a Member of Parliament and the

Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence People and Veterans, Tobias Ellwood in September 2016, per two UK government sources briefed on their meetings. Mr. Ellwood’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The two men first met in New York in mid September 2016 as the UN General Assembly was taking place. I’m told that this first meeting was fairly informal on the sidelines of the UN gathering. It is unclear how they got in touch with each other and what they discussed. Papadopoulos and Ellwood met again in London later that month. A meeting that Papadopoulos had in London in the same month was described to me as a “working-level meeting” by two sources who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to discuss the topic. I am unable to confirm that Ellwood was the Official that had this working-level meeting with the Trump adviser.

MP Tobias Ellwood

Ellwood has a long résumé in U.K. politics. He is a member of the Conservative party and was elected in 2005. Previously, he served as the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Middle East, Africa and Counter Terrorism from 2014–2017. The meetings with Papadopoulos took place during this time. Ellwood’s superior was the UK Secretary of State, Boris Johnson, who assumed that post two months prior to the Papadopoulos-Ellwood encounters.

In 2013, Johnson called for the end of providing police resources to guard WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

The current CIA Director Mike Pompeo has labeled WikiLeaks a “hostile intelligence service…often abetted by states like Russia.” The US intelligence community (CIA, NSA, ODNI, DHS) concluded as a whole that Russian hackers passed the stolen DNC and John Podesta emails to WikiLeaks to release to the public. WikiLeaks denies that the emails came from any Russian sources.

The White House has repeatedly claimed that the 31-year-old Papadopoulos was a “low-level volunteer” who didn’t play much of a role in foreign affairs and they maintain that Papadopoulos was nothing more than “the coffee boy.” The Papadopoulos relationship with the U.K. Under-Secretary of State for the Middle East, Africa and Counter Terrorism casts doubt on these claims. In addition to Ellwood, Papadopoulos has had discussions with the Greek Defense Minister, Greek President, Cyprus officials, and Israeli officials.

Correction: A previous version of this story said that Boris Johnson spoke about freeing Julian Assange in 2016. The quote is from 2013.

Contact the Writer: @ScottMStedman

Contact the Editor: Nathaniel de Gala