BYRON YORK: Republicans seek release of secret Papadopoulos transcripts.

The reason Papadopoulos’ experience is so important is because the FBI has cited it as the reason the bureau officially began the Trump-Russia investigation, known as Crossfire Hurricane, on July 31, 2016. The FBI said that Australian diplomats, who talked with Papadopoulos in London, told U.S. government officials that Papadopoulos said Russia had damaging information about Hillary Clinton. After that, the FBI reportedly sent “Azra Turk” to London and also used other resources to find out what was going on with Papadopoulos. They created a record of their work, according to Gowdy.

“If the bureau is going to send an informant in, the informant is going to be wired,” Gowdy said. “And if the bureau is monitoring telephone calls, there’s going to be a transcript of that.”

Gowdy cast his statement as a hypothetical, but it did not veil much of anything. “Some of us have been fortunate to know whether or not those transcripts exist, but they haven’t been made public,” he said.

Gowdy strongly suggested at least one of the transcripts has information that would be exculpatory for Papadopoulos.

“Very little in this Russia probe, I’m afraid, is going to persuade people who hate Trump or who love Trump,” he said. “But there is some information in these transcripts that I think has the potential to be a game-changer, if it’s ever made public.”

“You say there’s exculpatory evidence,” replied Bartiromo, “and when people see that, they’re going to say, wait, why wasn’t this presented to the court earlier?”

As a guess, precisely because it was exculpatory.