FBI, Media try to shift emphasis from dirty dossier to Papadopoulos

Washington Examiner:

The FBI reportedly decided to open its investigation into the Trump campaign after George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser for the Trump team, drunkenly admitted to an Australian diplomat the Russians had damaging information on Hillary Clinton, an admission that came weeks before WikiLeaks began publishing its tranche of hacked emails.

Papadopoulos made the revelation in May 2016 to Alexander Downer, the top Australian diplomat in Britain, while he was drinking at the Kensington Wine Rooms in London. Three weeks earlier, a professor with ties to the Russian government told Papadopoulos the Russians had emails that would be damaging to Clinton, according to the New York Times.

Australian officials notified American officials about Papadopoulos’s statements two months later when WikiLeaks began publishing the hacked emails from Democratic officials, American and foreign officials told the New York Times.

According to the New York Times, it was Papadopoulos’s revelation to the Australian diplomat, as well as the hacked emails, that served as the catalysts for the FBI’s probe into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign, and Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI earlier this year and is said to be cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller, who was tapped to take over the investigation in May.

President Trump and his allies, though, have suggested it was a dossier containing salacious details about Trump that was funded in part by the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s campaign and drafted by a former British spy that led the FBI to open its investigation into the Trump campaign in July 2016.
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The problem with this theory of the case is that the hacked emails did not dish any dirt on Hillary Clinton.  What they did was expose how the DNC rigged the primaries.  If they had dirt on Hillary Clinton they certainly did not use it during the campaign.  Dirt oh Hillary would be evidence of taking bribes to get the Uranium One deal.  It would be releasing classified emails that she thought she had destroyed.  All the DNC emails and the Podesta emails showed was teh obvious.  They were not funning a fair primary election campaign.

Papadopoulos may have wanted to get dirt on Hillary from the Russians, but there is no evidence that he did.  If there were Mueller would not be messing around with a "lying to the FBI" count.   However, if he had gotten the "dirt" on Clinton from the Russians it would not have been a violation of the law.