The Associated Press has been searching for Joseph Mifsud and hunting down more information about the mysterious academic who allegedly told George Papadopoulos the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign.
An Associated Press investigation of Mifsud’s career has uncovered an international trail of mismanagement and financial problems stretching over a decade. It doesn’t answer the key question of whether Mifsud was acting on behalf of Russian interests — wittingly or otherwise — when he allegedly passed the tip to the Trump campaign team, but it does sketch out a bizarre academic career punctuated by scandals and disappearing acts.
When Mifsud’s name first surfaced in connection with U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, Mifsud denied discussing emails with Papadopoulos or having any connection to Russia. He then fell off the map for nearly a year, leading some to speculate he might be dead .
Mifsud’s Swiss-German lawyer, Stephan Roh, has recently assured the AP that Mifsud is alive and has disputed almost all the allegations against him, saying via email that the 58-year-old hadn’t committed any crime and that the claims leveled against him are either old, unsubstantiated or consist of what he described as “defamatory departing music.”
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Roh said he last heard from his client earlier this month through an intermediary he refused to identify and last saw him face-to-face in May.
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In fact, Mifsud’s vanishing act is not out of character.
The AP has documented at least three previous efforts by Mifsud to drop out of the public eye after being caught up in controversies. Laris Gaiser, a Slovenian crisis consultant who was brought in to investigate Mifsud’s tenure at the Euro-Mediterranean University, said that going off the grid is Mifsud’s modus operandi.
“Disappearing for him is the most perfect way to survive,” Gaiser said.
The AP details Mifsud's many messy and unsuccessful stints in the world of academia, including the one he had when he connected with Papadopoulos.
Mifsud was brought on to the now-defunct London Academy of Diplomacy. It was via his Russian personal assistant there that Mifsud got in touch with the director of the Moscow Academy of Diplomacy, Evgeny Bazhanov, and Russian International Affairs Council representative Ivan Timofeev, according to a copy of the assistant’s CV still posted to LinkedIn.
In early 2016, Mifsud would introduce Papadopoulos to Timofeev and the latter two would go on to speak for months about potentially arranging a trip by candidate Trump to Moscow. Those were among the conversations that Papadopoulos tried and failed to misrepresent to the FBI, eventually earning the former campaign staffer a two week prison sentence.
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Many of those who have interacted with Mifsud laugh off the idea that he could have ever been spy or an asset of any kind.
Gaiser, the Slovenian consultant, said Mifsud was too incompetent to play any significant role in whatever machinations are purported to have happened between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
“I do not believe he’s the real connection to any real scandal. I’m closer to Melania Trump than he is to Putin,” Gaiser said, referring to the first lady’s Slovenian background. “If they’re trying to impeach the most important president in the world with Mifsud, then they have nothing.”
But Ruvina, the Albanian student who Mifsud once offered to mentor, isn’t so sure.
She described Mifsud as a “common, greedy person” who had “the talent of not having a visible talent.” She didn’t know that Mifsud had been caught up in the U.S. special counsel’s investigation until the AP told her, but she said she wasn’t surprised at his alleged role.
“It’s always the common guys that are used to play these parts,” she said.
Full story: Malta academic in Trump probe has history of vanishing acts (AP)