The Department of Justice wants to interview a shadowy Maltese professor who played an ambiguous but critical role in the Russia collusion hoax.
U.S. Attorney John Durham, whom Attorney General William Barr appointed to review the Russia probe’s origins, has reached out to lawyers for Josef Mifsud, the Hill’s John Solomon reported. According to Robert Mueller, the Russia investigation started when Mifsud met with ex-Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos and told him about “Russian dirt” on Hillary Clinton. But Republicans have speculated that Mifsud is actually an FBI plant who effectively set up Papadopoulos, especially since Mifsud was not charged by Mueller’s team with a crime, despite making false statements to the FBI.
In what turned out to be awkward, doddering testimony on Capitol Hill Wednesday, Mueller declined to clear up the mystery when asked about Mifsud, but, as Solomon suggests, given the investigations already underway at the Department of Justice, the truth about him may not remain hidden much longer.
The Mueller-Mifsud mystery
According to Solomon, Mifsud’s attorney, Stephan Roh, confirmed that Durham reached out to him seeking an interview with his client. Failing that, Durham would like to see a deposition that Mifsud gave in 2018 about his involvement in the Trump-Russia hoax.
Mifsud played an important, but still murky, role at the inception of the Russia probe. According to Mueller’s report, Mifsud — whom Mueller describes as connected with Moscow — met with Papadopoulos in London in April of 2016 and told him that Russians had “thousands of emails” of Clinton’s. According to the official narrative, Mifsud’s interactions with Papadopoulos justified the eventual launching of the counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign in July 2016. This is the official Mueller narrative:
Campaign foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos made early contact with Joseph Mifsud, a London-based professor who had connections to Russia and traveled to Moscow in April 2016. Immediately upon his return to London from that trip, Mifsud told Papadopoulos that the Russian government had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails. One week later, in the first week of May 2016, Papadopoulos suggested to a representative of a foreign government that the Trump Campaign had received indications from the Russian government that it could assist the Campaign through the anonymous release of information damaging to candidate Clinton. Throughout that period of time and for several months thereafter, Papadopoulos worked with Mifsud and two Russian nationals to arrange a meeting between the Campaign and the Russian government. No meeting took place.
But while Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to making false statements about his contacts with Mifsud, the Maltese academic somehow evaded punishment for the same crime. Mueller’s report states that he lied to the FBI during an interview in February 2017.
More troubling, Mifsud’s attorney has confirmed a disturbing tidbit in Mifsud’s biography on which Republicans including Devin Nunes (R-CA) have focused: while Mifsud has been described as connected with the Kremlin, he actually has extensive ties to Western intelligence. Roh told Solomon that contacts of Mifsud’s at Link University in Rome and the London Center of International Law Practice (LCILP), two academic groups with ties to Western intelligence, told Mifsud to seek out Papadopoulos in March of 2016.
In May, Nunes sent a letter to U.S. intelligence officials sketching Mifsud’s connections with Link and Western intelligence and leaders, including now-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The letter includes photographic evidence that the FBI conducted training seminars at Link. Nunes raised the possibility that Mifsud was an FBI informant.
Alternatively, if Mifsud is not [a Russian agent and therefore not] a counterintelligence threat, then that would cast doubt on the Special Counsel’s fundamental depiction of him and his activities….furthermore, it’s still a mystery how the FBI knew to ask Papadopoulos specifically about Hillary Clinton’s emails, on multiple occasions throughout 2016-2017 before having interviewed Mifsud, if the FBI hadn’t already somehow received this information directly or indirectly from Mifsud himself.
Troubling omissions
If Roh’s, and Nunes’, account is true, then the entire Mueller narrative surrounding the probe’s inception — that Papadopoulos was the one seeking Russian intelligence from a Russian source — may be upside down. To the contrary, it appears that the former Trump aide may have been set up.
As Solomon notes, Mueller oddly never mentions the FBI’s connections with Link in his report. According to Roh, Mifsud was instructed by officials at Link to set up Papadopoulos to meet with two Russians — a think tank official, and a woman whom he was told to tell Papadopoulos was Vladimir Putin’s niece. The woman was actually a student at the London campus where Mifsud taught.
Mifsud has denied being connected to the Kremlin, the International Business Times noted. The eccentric figure has been described as having a “bizarre academic career punctuated by scandals and disappearing acts,” the Associated Press reported in October. He started working at the London Academy of Diplomacy in 2013.
Mifsud’s Western ties, along with the odd fact that he was never charged for making false statements to the FBI, have troubled Republicans like Nunes and Jordan. Both suspect that there is more to the story of why the elusive figure was never penalized, but Mueller has stayed mum about the Mifsud mystery.
Mueller won’t explain
Though Mifsud was mentioned during Mueller’s disastrous testimony before Congress on Wednesday, the former special counsel pointedly rebuffed questions from Nunes and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) relating to the mysterious character. Jordan asked Mueller why Mifsud, unlike Papadopoulos, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and others, was never indicted, but Mueller evaded Jordan’s questions.
Mueller’s repeated dodging of key questions about Mifsud left Jordan visibly frustrated, remarking at one point about the volume of his non-answers, “A lot of things you can’t get into.”
Jordan then suggested, “Maybe a better course of action is to figure out how the false accusations started. Maybe it’s to go back and actually figure out why Joseph Mifsud was lying to the FBI. And here’s the good news – here’s the good news – that’s exactly what Bill Barr is doing. And thank goodness for that. Thar’s exactly what the attorney general and John Durham are doing.”
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