An Italian newspaper published audio recordings of someone claiming to be the mysterious professor who allegedly told a member of President Trump’s 2016 campaign the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.
Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese academic with ties to Rome-based Link Campus University, has not made a public appearance since 2017. He is now a subject of interest for U.S. Attorney John Durham, who is engaged in a criminal investigation into U.S. intelligence gathering during the 2016 election and afterward.
The person who speaks in the audio, obtained by Corriere della Sera through an anonymous email account late Tuesday, claims in English that the recording was made on Nov. 11 and denied having any links to “intelligence” or “secret” services. The man claiming to be Mifsud said he is merely a “networker” who brings people together for “academic purposes” and any contact with someone connected to intelligence agencies would have been unknown to him.
That assertion clashes with two prevailing theories about Mifsud. Special counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated Russian interference in the 2016 election, noted in his report that Mifsud may have ties to Russian intelligence. Another theory, favored by Republican allies of Trump and Stephan Roh, a lawyer who claims to represent Mifsud, posits Mifsud as a Western intelligence asset who was perhaps used to undermine Trump’s candidacy.
George Papadopoulos, the former Trump campaign adviser who pleaded guilty in October 2017 to making false statements to the FBI about his contacts with Russians and served 12 days in prison late last year, claims he was told by Mifsud in London in 2016 the Russians had “thousands” of Democratic presidential candidate Clinton’s missing emails.
After Papadopoulos conveyed to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer that the Russians had damaging information on Clinton, Downer told American officials about their conversation. This sparked the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation, called Crossfire Hurricane, which was later wrapped into Mueller’s Russia inquiry.
Mueller’s team alleged in a court filing in Papadopoulos’ case that his lies to the FBI in January 2017 “impeded” the investigation into Russian interference because they “undermined investigators’ ability to challenge the professor or potentially detain or arrest him while he was still in the United States.” Court documents said investigators had located the professor in Washington, D.C., two weeks after Papadopoulos was interviewed by the FBI on Jan. 27, 2017. During that interview, Mifsud denied telling Papadopoulos anything about Russian “dirt” and claimed his Russian contacts were not significant.
Mifsud left the United States on Feb. 11, 2017, and is believed to have never returned.
In the audio released this week, the person claiming to be Mifsud said he had no contact with friends and family for months because of the “blown up” issues stemming from the Russia controversy.
“It is extremely important, finally, I’ve just mentioned, that I am given the possibility of coming back to life,” he said. “It has been very, very difficult for me to live like this without any human contact, without a human experience. And I believe I should be given the opportunity to do that. It is extremely important that somebody somewhere decides to let me breathe again.”
An analysis by Bellingcat, an investigative journalism website that specializes in open-source intelligence, determined the person speaking is likely Mifsud, citing the similarities in mispronunciations of words that would be hard to imitate. Mifsud’s former girlfriend Anna told BuzzFeed News that she was certain the person in the recording was the Maltese professor.
Roh, the Swiss-German attorney who claims to be representing Mifsud, told the Washington Examiner his firm has received “no news” from his client “for some time” and therefore have restricted “our action to the minimum to protect his presumed interests. This is, in particular, the cooperation with US investigators.”
“We also try to correct wrong news and false statements of third parties,” he said in an email. “As we have had no further news from Prof Mifsud, and also no further instructions, we assume that we are still mandated and will act in line with our lawyers’ obligations.”
As to the question of whether the newly surfaced audio is legitimate, Roh noted it was “unverified.” He concluded with a cryptic message: “‘Seems that the Old Puppet Master made Pinocchio dance.'”
Attorney General William Barr and Durham recently flew to Rome to meet with Italian intelligence to obtain government information on Mifsud and listen to a secret recording of the elusive academic. Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said afterward he made clear to Barr and Durham that his country’s intelligence services had no ties to Mifsud.
The Justice Department has also allegedly obtained two Blackberry devices used by Mifsud, former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s defense team claimed in a court filing.
