The Department of Justice seeks an interview with Joseph Mifsud, the Maltese academic who told former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos that the Russians had damaging information about Hillary Clinton, to determine if he was part of an intelligence operation.
U.S. Attorney John Durham, who has been tasked by Attorney General William Barr to lead a review of the origins of the Russia investigation, made an overture to Mifsud’s attorney, Stephan Roh. Little has leaked about Durham’s efforts up until now, other than he began his review in the spring and he wanted to interview at least one senior counterintelligence official and a senior analyst who examined Russia’s role in interfering in the 2016 election.
Trump gave Barr “full and complete authority to declassify information” in his inquiry, and he picked Durham as his right-hand man in this effort.
Sources, including Roh, confirmed to The Hill that an investigator reached out; if an interview does not pan out, Durham’s team at least wants to view a recorded deposition Mifsud gave in 2018 on his role in the Trump-Russia controversy. Roh said he would provide a least one page of the deposition to Durham’s investigators.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner‘s request for comment.
The revelation about Durham’s outreach to Mifsud, a mysterious figure who has long been suspected of deep ties to Russian intelligence, comes on the eve of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s public testimony on Capitol Hill.
Mueller’s 448-page report, released in April with redactions, stated Mifsud traveled to Moscow in April 2016, after which he met Papadopoulos in London. Mueller’s report said that during this meeting, Mifsud informed Papadopoulos that he learned that the Russians had “dirt” on Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.” Papadopoulos later repeated this claim to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, who informed the U.S. government and prompted the original counterintelligence investigation into Trump’s campaign in July 2016.
Mifsud has denied that he told Papadopoulos the Russians had Clinton’s emails, and Roh claims his client has cooperated with Western intelligence, not Russian intelligence, aligning with what GOP investigators, such as Rep. Devin Nunes, have said.
Mueller’s report only went as far as to say Mifsud “had connections to Russia” and “maintained various Russian contacts,” including a with a former employee of the Internet Research Agency, a Russian troll farm that investigators said carried out a social media disinformation campaign to sow discord in the 2016 election.
As part of Mueller’s Russia investigation, Papadopoulos pleaded guilty in October 2017 to making false statements to the FBI about his contacts with Mifsud and served 12 days in prison late last year.
