Papadopoulos tried to connect a fellow Trump aide with Russian source of 'golden showers' dossier info: report

Despite the White House's insistence that former adviser George Papadopoulos was an incidental, unpaid volunteer on the Trump presidential campaign, new analyses show the extent of Papadopoulos' influence.

In a report from The Washington Post, reporters found that although some more senior Trump campaign officials "appeared to rebuff Papadopoulos' persistent offer to broker a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin," the unsealed documents from the former adviser's case don't indicate that he was reprimanded for doing so.

Soon after joining the campaign, he attended a March 31, 2016 meeting attended by both Trump and now-Attorney General Jeff Sessions where he brought up his "connections" that could assist in arranging a meeting between the candidate and Putin. Around that time, he also began appearing on behalf of the campaign in foreign media, and told a group of Israeli researchers in April 2016 that Trump viewed Putin as "a responsible actor and potential partner," the Jerusalem Post reported.

Court documents analyzed by the Post also show that in September 2016, Papadopoulos told Boris Epshteyn, a fellow campaign aide, that he wanted to set up a meeting in New York with a man named Sergei Millian from the Russian American Chamber of Commerce. Millian, it turns out, is allegedly a "major source" for the writer of the controversial Trump-Russia dossier -- a claim that Millian denies.

When asked by the Post about Papadopoulos, Epshteyn, the powerful chief political analyst at Sinclair Broadcasting Group, said he never met Millian and did not offer additional comments.