Matt Bevan

Someone in the Israeli embassy said, oh, you might want to chat to this guy.

He's from the Trump campaign.

He's sort of talking about what the Trump campaign's priorities are.

And Alexander Downer, through one of the diplomats, because, of course, at the time, Alexander Downer was the Australian High Commissioner.

Like the ambassador, effectively.

Exactly, to the United Kingdom.

So he was Australia's man in London and there was a representative of the Trump campaign there and he went, well, maybe I'll meet with this guy tomorrow

see if he's got anything interesting to say.

So Downer's version of this story is that they met up at the Kensington Wine Rooms, which is a wine bar.

Not the dog and duck.

No.

That's not their style.

No, no.

But he did tell me that neither he nor Papadopoulos were impressed with the wine selection, and so they both had G&Ts.

They had one or two G&Ts.

They had not a particularly interesting conversation to start with,

But then, Downer says, George Papadopoulos told him that the Russians had a large trove of dirt on Hillary Clinton.

This was during the campaign between Trump and Hillary Clinton and that they were going to release this information at some point.

And this was something worthy of a sort of a note.

Downer went, oh, that's interesting.