He “elevated his self-interest over the national interest,” he said. The judge also fined Mr. Papadopoulos $9,500 and ordered him to complete 200 hours of community service and one year of probation after he is released from custody.
Andrew D. Goldstein, a prosecutor on Mr. Mueller’s team, told the judge that because Mr. Papadopoulos lied, investigators were forced into a painstaking monthslong examination of 100,000 emails and other communications to establish how Russian intermediaries tried to use him as a channel to the Trump campaign. Even after he pleaded guilty, Mr. Goldstein said, Mr. Papadopoulos made only “begrudging efforts to cooperate.”
Roughly 60 percent of defendants in such cases receive probation, the judge said, and sentencing guidelines suggested a punishment from probation to six months in prison.
While Mr. Papadopoulos deserved a harsher punishment than probation, the judge said, he also deserved credit for trying to cooperate and for his apparent contrition. In that, he said, he differed from Alex van der Zwaan, a Dutch lawyer who pleaded guilty to deceiving the special counsel’s office about his work for Paul Manafort, the president’s former campaign manager, who was convicted last month on fraud charges. Mr. van der Zwaan, who served a 30-day prison sentence, expressed little remorse during his sentencing.
In comments to reporters aboard Air Force One on his way to Fargo, N.D., Mr. Trump sought to distance himself from the sentencing. “I see Papadopoulos today; I don’t know Papadopoulos, I don’t know,” Mr. Trump said, adding, “They got him, on I guess, on a couple of lies.”
The president used his former aide’s conviction to deride Mr. Mueller’s inquiry on Twitter, implying that each day of the 14-day sentence equaled $2 million in the investigation’s budget. In fact, the special counsel’s office has secured five other guilty pleas or convictions. About two dozen Russian citizens have also been indicted but have eluded arrest.
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