Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Papadopoulos Addressed Jewish Event For Trump Campaign At GOP Convention

George Papadopoulos, the unpaid Trump campaign official who pleaded guilty earlier this year to making false statements to the FBI in relation to the Trump-Russia investigation, spoke on the campaign’s behalf at a panel at the Republican National Convention in July organized by the American Jewish Committee.

The White House has sought to portray Papadopoulos as a low-level volunteer with an “extremely limited” role.

But the campaign offered Papadopoulos as a panelist for a July 20 American Jewish Coalition event on the sidelines of the convention in Cleveland.

“He was a volunteer …. again, on a council that met once,” Sanders said.

Papadopoulos and other speakers, including Sen. Bob Corker (then one of Trump’s top supporters but now a major critic), discussed the Iran nuclear deal and America’s role in global affairs.

The Cleveland Jewish News announced in July 2016 that they and AJC would co-sponsor four panel discussions during the convention. Videos of two of the four events are featured on AJC’s YouTube channel, but the event featuring Papadopoulos is not.

The following month, Trump national campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis emailed Papadopoulos to “encourage” him to travel to Russia to meet with Russian officials, according to court documents and news reports.

Contact Aiden Pink at [email protected]

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.