While most of the political world focused its attention elsewhere, special prosecutor John Durham’s team quietly reached out this summer to a lawyer representing European academic Joseph Mifsud, one of the earliest and most mysterious figures in the now closed Russia-collusion case.
An investigator told Swiss attorney Stephan Roh that Durham’s team wanted to interview Mifsud, or at the very least review a recorded deposition the professor gave in summer 2018 about his role in the drama involving Donald Trump, Russia and the 2016 election.
The contact, confirmed by multiple sources and contemporaneous email, sent an unmistakable message: Durham, the U.S. attorney handpicked by Attorney General William Barr to determine whether the FBI committed abuses during the Russia investigation, is taking a second look at one of the noteworthy figures and the conclusions of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report.
The evidence I reviewed suggests Mueller’s handiwork may be exposed for glaring omissions that, when brought to public light, leave key questions unanswered, especially about how the FBI’s unprecedented probe of the Trump campaign started.
Durham is focused on determining whether any government or private figures who came in contact with the Trump campaign in 2016 “were engaged in improper surveillance,” a U.S. official told me when asked about the Mifsud overture.
For those who don’t remember, Mifsud is a Maltese-born academic with a VIP Rolodex who frequented Rome and London for years and engaged at the highest levels of Western diplomatic and intelligence circles.
Mueller’s team alleges that Mifsud is the person who fed a story in spring 2016 to Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos about Moscow possessing purloined emails from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It was the earliest known contact in the now-debunked collusion narrative and the seminal event that the FBI says prompted it on July 31, 2016, to open its probe into the Trump campaign.
Mueller concluded that Mifsud was a person with extensive Russia ties who planted the story about the Clinton emails in Moscow and then lied about his dealings with Papadopoulos when interviewed by the FBI in 2017. Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Mifsud.
But unlike others accused of misleading Mueller — including Papadopoulos, former Trump adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort — Mifsud was not charged with a crime.
Conservative defenders of President Trump, including former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), have raised recent concerns that Mueller’s portrayal of the Mifsud-Papadopoulos contacts doesn’t add up.
Roh told me the information he is preparing to share with Durham’s team from his client will accentuate those concerns.
Mifsud was a “longtime cooperator of western intel” who was asked specifically by his contacts at Link University in Rome and the London Center of International Law Practice (LCILP) — two academic groups with ties to Western diplomacy and intelligence — to meet with Papadopoulos at a dinner in Rome in mid-March 2016, Roh told me.
A May 2019 letter from Nunes to U.S. intelligence officials corroborates some of Roh’s account, revealing photos showing that the FBI conducted training at Link in fall 2016 and that Mifsud and other Link officials met regularly with world leaders, including Boris Johnson, elected today as Britain’s new prime minister.
A few days after the March dinner, Roh added, Mifsud received instructions from Link superiors to “put Papadopoulos in contact with Russians,” including a think tank figure named Ivan Timofeev and a woman he was instructed to identify to Papadopoulos as Vladimir Putin’s niece.
Mifsud knew the woman was not the Russian president’s niece but, rather, a student who was involved with both the Link and LCILP campuses, and the professor believed there was an effort underway to determine whether Papadopoulos was an “agent provocateur” seeking foreign contacts, Roh said.
The evidence, he told me, “clearly indicates that this was not only a surveillance op but a more sophisticated intel operation” in which Mifsud became involved.
Roh has defended Mifsud in the media against various allegations, steadfastly denying Mueller’s claim that his client ever told Papadopoulos about Clinton emails in Russia. Roh wrote a book last year that first floated the idea of Mifsud as a Western intelligence op.
If the FBI’s and Mueller’s portrayals are correct, Mifsud’s current story could be simply a Russian disinformation campaign or an exaggeration by a lawyer who seeks media attention and book promotion. Thus, everything Mifsud says must be given careful scrutiny.
But a close examination of the Mueller report identifies significant gaps and omissions, and occasional inaccuracies, that pose troubling questions.
Ted Leiu: “The reason, again, that you did not indict Donald Trump is because of OLC opinion stating that you cannot indict a sitting president. Correct?”
Robert Mueller: “That is correct.”
@Ronald J. Ward:
Dang. Facts and stuff. You must hate em.
Mueller had no idea what was in the report or what he was doing. Of course, this story reveals the report lied about Misfud and Papadopolis, but you like being lied to, don’t you?
@Deplorable Me:
Think about this; when Mueller gave his press conference, he went to the podium, read his statement and then said “no questions.”
It was clear today that Robert Mueller, who, until now, had a stellar reputation (at least in the D.C. swamp) has some issues. He reminded me of a friend (who is also 74) who is in early onset of dementia. One of the telling points of Mueller’s mental deterioration is the fact that he did not know who Fusion GPS or Simpson was. There were other times he was unaware of what was in his own report, giving credence to the rumor that Andrew Weissmann, not Mueller, wrote the report.
One has to wonder how long Robert Mueller has been suffering from whatever ailment he clearly has. I had heard that he was deteriorating mentally months ago. And if the Democrats were aware of this man’s frail state, and still put him through today, shame on them. That makes then nothing but vipers.
@retire05: The Democrats are fully aware of his frailties. They EXPLOITED it. Just as they exploit the misery and suffering of illegal immigrants, they used Mueller’s weakness to try and put on a better show. They failed miserably.
mueller’s relatives ran a concentration camp in Poland and exterminated over one million Jews. his 12 year term as director of the fbi was a total disaster. oh and the uranium sale with slut hillery and whore dog billy, when is that going to be investigated? wonder if he followed drunk kerry and shot himself a few times for a purple heart?