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This whole article is a profound misunderstanding of why the FBI was not able to sufficiently question Joseph Mifsud (because lies by Trumpist hero Papadopoulos allowed him to escape the country) and of his *role*, which was merely that of a noncriminal Trump-Russia intermediary.
1/ Even the role of Papadopoulos is grossly misunderstood. He wasn't a key criminal actor in the allegations Trump and his campaign face, and likely wouldn't have faced charges if he hadn't lied to the FBI. I really wish media understood the Trump-Russia case/fact-pattern better.
2/ In other words, just because Mifsud is one of 20 or so important Trump-Russia interlocutors doesn't mean he committed a crime, and the idea that him not being indicted proves (despite no evidence!) that he's a U.S. agent is offensive and every media outlet should be saying so.
3/ Sometimes it's almost like media has done *no work* over the past fifty years to help Americans understand our justice system, even though media covers it incessantly. Fact: you can be a major percipient witness in a case without also becoming a defendant. Not too complicated!
4/ Republicans in DC have been the chief purveyors of misinformation about the justice system ever since I was born. The point Nunes was making yesterday wasn't really about Mifsud but trying to convince Americans that any major percipient witness must shortly become a defendant.
5/ Keep in mind, Mifsud was careful *not to actually offer the stolen Clinton emails to the Trump campaign* on behalf of the Kremlin. His role was simply to inform the campaign through Papadopoulos that the Kremlin had the emails, so it would *know* Putin was going to help Trump.
6/ I wrote a 450-page book on these events entitled PROOF OF COLLUSION (Simon & Schuster, 2018) and I *didn't identify* a crime committed by Mifsud. Yet Nunes says that Mifsud not being arrested proves he was part of a "deep-state" conspiracy and now the NYT is coddling his view.
7/ With every article I read on the Trump-Russia investigation, one of the first questions I ask myself is, "Who is the expert on the *underlying facts of the case* who this outlet spoke to to ensure that it *wasn't* spreading misinformation?" And the answer is usually, "No one."
8/ When it became clear that neither Mueller nor his team was going to leak to media, but that media was going to regularly have to write about the underlying facts of the Trump-Russia case, media needed to develop a stable of sources who were experts on the facts of the case.
9/ Not to be coy, but one option was to look for authors who'd written books on the subject, like David Corn, Luke Harding or Robert Miller. Instead, media turned to experts on criminal investigations who didn't necessarily have much knowledge of *this* particularly complex case.
10/ Don't get me wrong, I regularly get contacted by media to assist them in understanding the facts of the case, and I'm sure Corn, Harding, and Miller do as well, and also Craig Unger for Trump's background with Russia. But there probably should have been more of that going on.
PS/ My point: Any of Corn, Harding, Miller, Unger, or myself I'm sure would've ultimately told The New York Times not to write a story like that (see first tweet) because it profoundly miscasts the evidence in the country's most important federal criminal investigation ever. /end
