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New: Our deep dive on the “enigma” at the center of the Mueller probe, Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud. Trump allies claim he’s a Western intelligence agent. But we found lots of signs that point to Russia. W/ @PostRoz and @nakashimae washingtonpost.com/politics/the-e…
Officials familiar with U.S. intelligence reports told The Post that Mifsud had been identified by intelligence agencies as a potential Russian agent before he met Papadopoulos, an assessment drawn from reporting collected over several years.
That runs counter to the theory espoused by Trump allies like Devin Nunes and Rudy Giuliani, who has said, without offering evidence, that Mifsud was a “counterintelligence operative, either Maltese or Italian,” who took part a “counterintelligence trap.”
So why did we spend so much time on this, and why should you care? Attorney General Barr is now investigating the FBI/Mueller probe of Russian election interference and connections to the Trump campaign. Mifsud was in essence the impetus for that investigation.
If he really was a Western agent sent to create a pretext for the FBI investigation, that would be a scandal. And that theory has gained traction in influential circles, and has in essence been stoked by the president. Barr has also said there was “spying” on the campaign.
But there is no real evidence that Mifsud was working for the FBI, the CIA, or British intelligence, as has been variously alleged. And while it’s still unclear what role if any he played in the Kremlin’s 2016 campaign, Mifsud’s links to Moscow are real and verifiable.
