Chuck Ross at the Daily Caller (19 Apr 2020) reported that the Senate Judiciary Committee released a declassified transcript of Halper’s September 2016 conversation with George Papadopoulos in London. Ross wrote that Halper name-checked retired Russian intelligence officials, including Vyacheslav Trubnikov. That is the transcript as published. It is not a finding that Papadopoulos took the bait.
The Federalist (15 Apr 2020) quoted the IG summary of the same meeting: Halper was tasked to ask whether the campaign benefitted from Russian assistance or WikiLeaks. Papadopoulos’s recorded reply, as the Federalist reproduced it from the IG: “To run a shop like that … of course it’s illegal. No one’s looking to … obviously get into trouble like that … there’s been no collusion and it’s going to remain that way.” That is a quoted denial. Horowitz later noted that such exculpatory statements were omitted from FISA applications. An omitted denial is an IG finding about the applications. It is not a Halper conviction.
Daily Caller (2 May 2019) separately reported that a woman using the alias Azra Turk posed as Halper’s assistant in London. That is the next post. Do not merge the assistant into this transcript as if they were the same recording.