Miranda Devine: Was Downer a patsy or just unlucky?

The FBI’s Donald Trump witch hunt may have been kicked off by Alexander Downer’s tip off about the Russian emails but was he really a Clinton patsy or just unlucky in his timing, asks Miranda Devine.

Shadowy former Trump campaign operative George Papadopoulos is still giving interviews on American television claiming Australia was part of an “international conspir­acy to undermine the Donald Trump campaign”.

Papadopoulos, of course, was the man at the infamous meeting with ­Alexander Downer in a London wine bar in May 2016, six months before Trump was elected President.

Downer, then Australia’s High Commissioner to the UK, instigated the meeting and afterwards gave the American embassy information from Papadopoulos suggesting the Russians had damaging material on Hillary Clinton.

Donald Trump was under the impression former politician Alexander Downer “was a Clinton patsy”. Picture: AAP Image/David Mariuz

Downer’s tip-off sparked the FBI’s two-year wild goose chase looking for Russian collusion with Trump’s election campaign.

It all came to nothing, but enraged Trump, whose Attorney-General Bill Barr is now investigating possible misconduct by the FBI in the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation.

Downer’s curious decision to go ­direct to the Americans with his Pap­adopoulos information is part of Barr’s probe. Among Republican concerns is the fact that the FBI didn’t tell Congress that Downer was linked to the Clinton Foundation via a $25 million donation of taxpayer’s money he made when he was Foreign Minister.

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A friend of Trump in Washington says the President had been “under the impression Downer was a Clinton patsy”.

In a letter to Scott Morrison last week urging Australia’s co-operation with Barr, Trump ally Senator Lindsay Graham described Downer as an “Australian diplomat who was also directed to contact Papadopoulos and relay­ ­information obtained from Papadopoulos regarding the campaign to the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” a characterisation rejected by US ­Ambassador Joe Hockey.

US Ambassador Joe Hockey rejects claims that Downer was relaying information between George Papadopoulos and the FBI. Picture: Kym Smith

But more information has emerged since about Downer’s role from a high-placed source in Washington, which may cast it in a more benign light.

In May 2016, Trump just had been declared the presumptive Republican nominee, much to the surprise, and in many cases, horror of Canberra’s foreign affairs bureaucracy.

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Papadopoulos was “running around London big-noting himself”, says the source. So Erika Thompson, a political counsellor from the Australian High Commission, contacted him to set up a meeting with Downer, ostensibly to learn about Trump. After the meeting, Downer wrote a three-page cable to Canberra essentially saying: “Trump’s not too bad and, by the way, the Russians have stuff on Hillary.” The Clinton mention was one paragraph buried in the cable.

Canberra at the time was in election mode, with polling day less than two months away, and the cable was filed away without comment.

US President Donald Trump asked Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison to help probe the origins of the Russian investigation. Picture: Alex Edelman / AFP

There it may have stayed if not for Wikileaks, two months later, releasing emails stolen by Russian hackers from the Democratic National Committee.

It was then that Downer decided to go straight to the Americans with his titbit on Clinton and the Russians.

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Downer and Thompson are ­believed to be now co-operating fully with the Barr investigation and are willing to speak with investigators at an undisclosed location, not Australia.

The source says Downer’s direct contact with the Americans, while ­unusual, was not “outside the rules” of the diplomatic trade, especially when it comes to exchanging information with another “Five Eyes” country.

Downer may not have been a patsy of the Clintons, but it appears the FBI seized his tip-off as the flimsy pretext to launch its investigation into Trump’s campaign. That’s how Australia became embroiled in the biggest scandal in Washington.

Miranda Devine will be based in New York through 2020 covering current affairs for The Daily Telegraph.