Joseph Mifsud, an academic who’s been rubbing shoulders with Western intelligence and security officials, was prompted in the spring of 2016 to introduce George Papadopoulos, then a junior aide to the Trump campaign, to Mifsud’s contacts in Russia.
According to Stephan Roh, Mifsud’s lawyer, the suggestion came from Mifsud’s longtime associate and former Italian interior minister, Vincenzo Scotti, as well as Nagi Idris, a lawyer of Sudanese origin who at the time was Papadopoulos’s boss at the London Centre for International Law Practice (LCILP).
Information stemming from the Mifsud-Papadopoulos contacts was cited by the FBI as the reason why the bureau launched a counterintelligence investigation into several members of the Trump campaign.
Roh’s account comes at a time when the Trump administration, as well as some Republican lawmakers, seek to determine how the snooping on Trump campaign aides under the Obama administration was started and justified.
Roh said he provided to Durham’s team a May 2018 recorded deposition of Mifsud’s together with other information. Roh also provided the deposition to some members of Congress “as we think that it is in the best interest of Prof Mifsud to cooperate with US investigators and as he has not instructed us otherwise,” Roh said in an email.
Russia Dud
Mifsud was portrayed in the final report of special counsel Robert Mueller as a person who “maintained various Russian contacts.” (pdf)In the spring of 2016, the FBI was still investigating whether Clinton mishandled classified information by using a private email server for State Department business. The U.S. intelligence community assisted in that probe by checking whether Clinton’s emails had been obtained by foreign actors.
Weeks after the FBI closed that investigation without charging Clinton, much of the same counterintelligence team learned of what Mifsud told Papadopoulos and promptly opened the Trump-Russia probe, according to the official narrative.
Mueller took over the probe in 2017 and, in March, concluded that “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
Mifsud or Scotti?
If Roh’s representations prove accurate, they would deal another blow to the FBI’s justification for starting the probe, undermining its portrayal of Mifsud as a cut-out between the Russian government and Papadopoulos.After the dinner, as they were leaving the restaurant, Mifsud continued to chat with Papadopoulos and learned “he was going to join … Mr. Trump’s campaign,” he said. In fact, it was about a week or two after Papadopoulos joined the campaign.
The two kept in contact and at some point “Scotti and Nagi Idris suggested that Mifsud should introduce Papadopoulos to his Russian contacts,” Roh said, referring to “declarations of Mifsud made in front of our team” and not the deposition itself.
Papadopoulos “was pushing very much to be introduced to Russians,” Roh said.
Papadopoulos previously acknowledged he was eager to prove himself to the campaign and envisioned organizing a high-level meeting with Russian officials.
On March 24, 2016, Papadopoulos met with Mifsud in London and Mifsud introduced him to Olga Polonskaya. Papadopoulos got the impression that she was “Putin’s niece” and that she and Mifsud “had the wherewithal to set up a meeting between the Trump campaign and Russian government officials,” according to court documents.
Mifsud later said it was Idris “who proposed that she was ‘Putin’s niece,’” according to Roh.
Idris didn’t respond to a request for comment.
In mid-April 2016, Mifsud introduced Papadopoulos to Ivan Timofeev, an academic with a think tank tied to the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry. Papadopoulos kept pressing for a meeting with Russian officials, but it never materialized.
Mifsud called Papadopoulos an “Agent Provocateur,” according to Roh, though it’s not clear whom he was supposed to provoke, for what purpose, and on whose behalf.
Russian Links
Mifsud’s Russian contacts appear mostly in academic circles. The Mueller report said Mifsud knew “a one-time employee” of the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the entity Mueller indicted for running a social media campaign aimed at stoking division among Americans before the 2016 election.The report seems to show that Mifsud in January and February 2016 discussed potentially meeting that person in Russia, though the investigation found no evidence that the meeting took place.
Link Campus Connection
Mifsud has been a man of many titles, but the only gig that stayed with him through nearly all of his career was at the Link Campus University in Rome.Former CIA analyst Stephen Marrin was a guest lecturer at Link.
FBI Special Agent Preston Ackerman apparently gave a presentation at Link in September 2016.
Pittella didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Roh is an investor in Link, holding a 5 percent stake, he said.
Link supposedly cut ties with Mifsud after his conversations with Papadopoulos came out in late 2017.
A request for comment from Scotti, emailed to Link Campus, went unanswered.