Cryptic new George Papadopoulos tweet suggests he may be about to make an even bigger mess for himself
This week we saw Special Counsel Robert Mueller formally recommend that former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos be sentenced to prison for up to six months as part of his plea deal. This past week we’ve also seen Papadopoulos’ wife tweet one bizarre conspiracy theory after another, while publicly calling for her husband to rip up his plea deal. George had remained silent about his wife’s behavior – until he posted a cryptic tweet which suggests he may indeed be about to make an even bigger mess for himself.
Things got particularly ugly when Robert Mueller accused Simona Papadopoulos of having made false claims about her husband’s cooperation in media interviews, even as Mueller was listing off the various ways in which George Papadopoulos had failed to fully live up to his end of the bargain. Here’s what George then tweeted: “Tick tock.” What does that mean? We don’t know. What stands out here is the precise timing of the tweet.
George posted his “Tick tock” tweet about half an hour before Simona posted an image of herself wearing a Donald Trump “Make America Great Again” hat, and within about twenty minutes before another relative Kiki Papadopoulos tweeting “United we stand, together we’ll fight with PapaD!!” This suggests that George may now be aligned with the thinking of his family members who want him to fight this. The trouble is that there isn’t really anything for him to “fight” at this point.
The most that George Papadopoulos can reasonably do is go into his sentencing hearing on September 7th and try to argue that he did a better job of cooperation than Robert Mueller is claiming. If Papadopoulos tries to back out of his plea deal, Mueller can quickly hit him with all the Trump-Russia criminal charges that he didn’t face as a result of having cut the deal. So if “Tick tock” really does mean that Papadopoulos is planning some last minute stunt before sentencing, he could be looking at years in prison, instead of months. Are we reading too much into this tweet? Maybe. But who who “Tick tock” on the verge of their sentencing hearing, unless they’re planning to cause trouble?
