2014: Julie Bishop Sent Him to London as High Commissioner.

On 31 March 2014, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop announced that Alexander Downer would be Australia’s next High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, succeeding Mike Rann. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade release is the appointment record. King’s College London later listed the posting as 2014–2018. He was succeeded by George Brandis; the term is widely reported as ending in April 2018. That is a diplomatic posting. It is not an FBI personnel file.

The High Commission in London is where the May 2016 meeting with George Papadopoulos was arranged. Erika Thompson, then a political counsellor at the High Commission, is named in later reporting as the official who set the meeting. Arrangement of a diplomatic meeting is not, by itself, a finding that the meeting was a planned sting. Papadopoulos later alleged one. Downer later denied one. Those claims live in later posts.

The appointment release recites his prior foreign-minister service. It does not mention Donald Trump, George Papadopoulos, or Crossfire Hurricane. Those events had not occurred. Do not read 2016 backward into the 2014 press release.