George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign adviser who pleaded guilty two years ago to lying to the F.B.I. about his Russian contacts during the 2016 presidential election, has filed paperwork signaling that he will run for Congress in California as a Republican to replace Representative Katie Hill.
Mr. Papadopoulos, 32, filed his statement of candidacy with the Federal Election Commission on Tuesday, listing a home address in Los Angeles and specifying that he would run to represent California’s 25th District, which includes Lancaster, Palmdale and other large swaths of the Antelope Valley and northern Los Angeles County.
Though Mr. Papadopoulos has not made a formal announcement about his intentions, he foreshadowed a run on Twitter on Tuesday, writing: “Announcement soon on my interest in Katie Hill’s soon to be vacant seat in the 25th district!” Attempts to reach him Wednesday morning were not immediately successful.
Mr. Papadopoulos filed his papers just two days after Ms. Hill, a freshman Democrat, said she would resign in the face of a House ethics investigation into allegations that she had a sexual relationship with a member of her congressional staff. She had been seen as a rising star in the caucus after defeating the Republican incumbent, Steve Knight, during the 2018 midterms, and her win helped put Democrats in control of the House.
Now her California district is back up for grabs. Republicans had controlled it since 1993, but voters there went for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
F.E.C. records show that seven Republicans — including Mr. Papadopoulos — and one Democrat have filed paperwork to run for the seat.
Christy Smith, a Democrat who is a California State Assemblywoman and longtime resident of Santa Clarita, has already announced that she will run to replace Ms. Hill in Congress. Latino Victory Fund, a progressive political action committee, has also said it “intends to recruit a strong and viable Latino candidate that will ensure this district remains Democratic for years to come.”
In 2017, Mr. Papadopoulos became the first aide in the Trump campaign to plead guilty in the special counsel’s investigation into ties between the president’s associates and the Russian government. He was sentenced last year to 14 days in jail for lying to the F.B.I. about his contacts with Russian intermediaries during the 2016 presidential race.
Prosecutors argued that Mr. Papadopoulos’s repeated lies during a January 2017 interview with investigators hampered the Russia investigation at a critical moment. In part because Mr. Papadopoulos misled the authorities, prosecutors said in court papers, they failed to arrest a London professor — who they believe is a Russian operative — before he left the United States that February.
In an interview with The New York Times around the time of the sentencing, Mr. Papadopoulos said he had sought to distance himself “as much as possible” from what he said was “probably an illegal action or dangerous information.” At the time of the F.B.I. interview, he told The Times, he was concerned about where the escalating investigation might lead.
He also told a judge that he was blinded by personal ambition and the thrill of being part of Donald J. Trump’s electoral victory.
“I was surrounded by important people,” he told the judge. “I was young and ambitious and excited.”
Ms. Smith has not hesitated to draw attention to Mr. Papadopoulos’s troubles, asking Tuesday on Twitter: “If he pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. — how do we know he’ll tell us the truth?”