Interviews and documents show that George Papadopoulos was in regular contact with many senior officials in the Trump campaign, while the president has called him a "low-level volunteer," according to The Washington Post.
Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI investigating Russian ties to the 2016 presidential election, sat next to then-Sen. Jeff Sessions at a campaign advisers' dinner weeks before the Republican National Convention, according to an individual who was present, The Post noted.
Emails in documents released by the court Monday show that Papadopoulos repeatedly told Trump officials about his contacts with people that he believed were Russian government representatives.
The documents do not answer whether he told Trump superiors he had met with a London professor who claimed he knew Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton that included her emails.
According to The Post, in July, an FBI agent told the court Papadopoulos lied to the agency, saying he told no one in the campaign about the professor because he thought it was "nothing."
The 29-year-old Papadopoulos had little experience in foreign affairs. He had worked for Ben Carson for about six weeks, who at the time was also running for the Republican presidential nomination.
The only vetting done was by Carson's campaign manager Barry Bennett, who called a friend at The Hudson Institute where Papadopoulos worked as a researcher.
"I wasn't looking for anything stellar," Bennett said, according to The Post.
Much of Papadopoulos' resume was exaggerated or false, The Post reported.
He made a number of media appearances as a Trump surrogate, until campaign officials told him to clear appearances with them and to keep a low profile. After that, he spoke on behalf of the Trump administration to Interfax, the Russian news agency.
He commented that he had senior-level contacts in the Russian government during a meeting with a mid-level British official, but the British officials concluded that Papadopoulos was not a knowledgeable player in the Trump administration and did not continue contact with him, The Post reported.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday that to her knowledge, Papadopoulos only interacted with the president at one advisory council meeting.
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