False Statements on Russia

George Papadopoulos, who served as a foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, has pleaded guilty to making false statements to FBI agents. He admits he lied about repeated contacts during the campaign with people he believed had ties to the Russian government.

Papadopoulos is the first to plead guilty in the federal investigation into the Russian government’s attempt to influence the 2016 presidential election and whether Trump’s campaign associates were involved in those efforts.

Of course, it’s a crime to intentionally mislead federal prosecutors.

It’s not a crime, however, to give inaccurate information to the media and the public — intentionally or unintentionally. And there have been instances in which Trump administration and campaign officials have made public statements about issues concerning Russia that turned out not to be true.

Here we recap some of those instances.

No Campaign Contacts with Russian Officials or Representatives?

A few days after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei A. Ryabkov, told Interfax news agency that the Russian government maintained contact with Trump’s “immediate entourage” during the campaign.

“There were contacts,” Ryabkov told the news agency, as reported by the New York Times on Nov. 10, 2016. “We continue to do this and have been doing this work during the campaign.”

“I don’t say that all of them, but a whole array of them supported contacts with Russian representatives,” Ryabkov said of Trump campaign officials, as reported by the Associated Press.

, who was Trump’s