Obama DNI Clapper: Papadopoulos 'Not a Name on My Radar Scope When I Left'

According to the latest narrative being spun in The New York Times, the impetus for the Russia inquiry was then 28-year-old George Papadopoulos, a minor Trump campaign aide who spilled the beans about how the Russians had political dirt on Hillary Clinton in an alcohol-fueled conversation with an Australian diplomat in a bar in London in May of 2016. The diplomat, Alexander Downer, was so alarmed by the bombshell disclosure, he waited until July to contact the FBI and fill them in.

(It’s worth noting that in the spring and summer of 2016, political junkies everywhere on the planet were talking about how the Russians probably had dirt on Hillary Clinton.)

The alleged hacking of Democratic Party servers and Papadopoulos’ alleged knowledge about it were the “driving factors that led the F.B.I. to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia’s attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump’s associates conspired,” according to the new narrative. Of course, last spring, the Times had nothing to say about Papadopoulos in reports that claimed Carter Page’s visit to Moscow was the thing that launched the FBI investigation.

Apparently the deep state was keeping the Papadopoulos information a deep secret. So secret, even former President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had no inkling about it.

In a Tuesday CNN interview, Clapper tried to play along with the latest nonsense narrative, but let slip that Papadopoulos wasn’t even a blip on his radar screen when he left office.

Clapper made a similar comment in another interview on CNN.  “Was George Papadopoulos a major factor in the launch of the investigation?” Anderson Cooper asked the former DNI. “Well — uh — not to my knowledge contemporaneously,” Clapper replied. “George Papadopoulos was … not a name on my radar scope at the time.”

So now we are to believe that Obama’s head of intelligence had never heard of this major Russia colluder who was the impetus for the entire Russia probe? If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.