It has long been suggested in court documents filed by United States Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team, by US Democrats and by the media that Maltese Professor Joseph Mifsud was connected to Russian intelligence.
But that assumption – that Mifsud was working on behalf of the Kremlin and contacted Donald Trump’s campaign team to tell them about hacked Hillary Clinton emails – is now coming under fresh scrutiny.
Speaking this week on Fox News’ Fox and Friends, former US federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy said, “The fishiest parts of the story are: Is Mifsud really a Russian agent?”
“No evidence has been presented to support the claim,” investigative journalist Lee Smith wrote in a story about Mifsud in RealClearInvestigations. “Although Mifsud has travelled many times to Russia and has contacts with Russian academics, his closest public ties are to Western governments, politicians, and institutions, including the CIA, FBI and British intelligence services.”
Court documents from the special counsel’s office refer to Mifsud as “an overseas professor” with “substantial connections to Russian government officials”.
The Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, in their report on Russia's attempted interference in the election released in April, described Mifsud as being “Kremlin-linked”.
However, Mifsud also had Western ties at academic institutions like the Link Campus University in Rome, the University of Stirling in Scotland, the London Academy of Diplomacy and the London Centre for International Law Practice.
If Mifsud was not working for Russia, why did he approach then-Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos in April 2016 saying that the Russians had “dirt” that could damage Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Papadopoulos then met Australian diplomat Alexander Downer over drinks in London, and told him about his conversations with Mifsud. Downer apparently then passed on the information to US officials, which led to the FBI opening its Russia investigation during the 2016 election.
Mifsud has all but vanished from the public eye since his name surfaced in stories about the Russia investigation.
But Smith even raised the possibility that Mifsud may have actually been working with Western intelligence.
“While most media accounts have simply repeated official claims that Mifsud is a sketchy character whose visits to Russia and academic contacts suggest he is working for Russian intelligence, a look at the available evidence challenges that narrative,” Smith wrote. “It also raises the possibility that Mifsud [may]…have actually been working for Western intelligence agencies.”
But that does not mean his conversation with Papadopoulos was part of any plot. In fact, Smith also suggested it is possible Mifsud was not working for anyone, and rather was a “man who wanted to seem important by repeating a rumour he’d heard to another man who also wanted to seem important”.
In a recent piece for National Review, McCarthy also floated the possibility that Mifsud is little more than a “Maltese academic who had no real Kremlin ties and no inside information about whether Russia actually possessed damaging information about Clinton, in the form of emails or otherwise”.
Whatever the case, Mifsud has become an important figure in Mueller’s probe.
Papadopoulos, who was 28 when he worked on the Trump campaign, pleaded guilty in October to lying to the FBI about his conversations with Mifsud.
A February memo released by the Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee said the intelligence passed on by the Australians about the diplomat’s meeting with Papadopoulos “triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 by FBI agent Pete Strzok.”
But Simona Manganite Papadopoulos, the wife of the former Trump aide, told Fox News this week that the discussion with Mifsud was little more than a "gossip conversation". She openly appealed to President Trump for a pardon if her husband faces prison.
The new questions about Mifsud come as Trump draws attention to reports that the FBI used another individual as a confidential informant in connection with the Russia case. The informant met with several campaign officials, including Papadopoulos, during the 2016 race.
US Republicans have pressed for more information about that informant, asking who asked him to reach out to campaign officials.