The FBI’s “302” on Mifsud: too short and superficial an interrogation for a suspected Russian agent
Two days ago, Joseph Mifsud's "302" , the report drawn up by the FBI on the interrogation of the Maltese professor held in Washington in February 2017, finally came out. Two pages that confirm all the contradictions that we have highlighted in recent months on Atlantico Newspaper about the conduct of the Mueller team and the entire facility of the Russiagate investigation.
We have always wondered, in particular, why , considering him a Russian agent or a person with high-level contacts in Russia, and believing that he had actually reported to Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos that the Russians were in possession of "dirt" material on candidate Clinton, the FBI and Special Attorney Mueller did not arrest, indict, or ever try to track down Mifsud after the February 2017 interrogation. Now, from 302 , it also emerges that that one interrogation was not even so thorough.
The Maltese professor, according to the report, denied the FBI agents of having known in advance any emails from the Democratic Committee held by the Russians and, therefore, having made proposals or provided information to Papadopoulos.
In the interrogation Mifsud confirmed the first meeting with Papadopoulos in Rome, at Link Campus University , and also a second meeting, in London, but he omitted the next two meetings.
A very brief and superficial interrogation for one suspected of being a Russian agent tasked with getting in touch with the Trump Campaign to help it win the election.
Mifsud himself told agents that he had put Papadopoulos in contact via email with Ivan Timofeev of the Russian International Affairs Council , linked to the Russian Foreign Ministry. Still, there is no question from the agents about his relations with Timofeev or with other personalities of (or close to) the Russian government. But it was precisely starting from his relationship with Timofeev that the narrative of the liberal media and the Mueller team was built according to which he is a Russian agent.
In short, there is no indication, in the February 2017 interrogation, that could suggest that the FBI considered Mifsud a Russian agent, contrary to how he would have been presented throughout the Russiagate investigation and in the final report of Special Attorney Mueller. .
The FBI had on their hands the key figure, from whose meetings with Papadopoulos the Crossfire Hurricane investigation had started, and let him go after a brief interrogation without even asking him about his ties to Russia. In his report, Mueller argues that Papadopoulos' misrepresentations to the FBI prevented agents from effectively questioning Mifsud in February 2017, and specifically from harassing him about his "inaccurate claims". Yet, in fact, none of the false statements contested to Papadopoulos could have hindered the investigation, much less compromised the interrogation. He had stated that at the time of the meetings with Mifsud he was not yet part of the Trump campaign, but the FBI already knew that it was false, as evidenced by the FISA surveillance request submitted in October 2016. It is also indifferent that Papadopoulos has belittled the 'importance of his communications with Mifsud and of the professor's contacts in Russia, since at the base of the investigation, since its opening, there was the revelation that a Russian agent had reported to Papadopoulos some "dirt" material on Clinton in Russian hands. Hence, Mifsud's Russian contacts should have been the focus of the February interrogation anyway.
Furthermore, when Mifsud denied the agents of having revealed anything, the FBI already knew that Papadopoulos had instead confirmed the circumstance. And when he denied further meetings, the FBI already knew there were two more in April 2016 after the two admitted by the professor. Inaccuracies that the agents could have immediately challenged in the February interrogation.
But in the two pages of Mifsud's 302 we also find the confirmation of the role of another figure in which the Mueller team seems not to have been interested. In their second meeting, the first in London, the professor arrives accompanied by a beautiful girl, Olga Polonskaya, a student of the Link Campus master's in intelligence, presented to Papadopoulos as linked to Putin or even his "niece". Mifsud tells agents that he does not believe he was a relative of Putin, but someone in Papadopoulos must have made him believe it, because as the FBI reports, on the day of the meeting he rushes to Google for confirmation. Mifsud also suggests to the agents that the two may have been in a relationship, but in his report Mueller writes that from the tone of the emails a personal relationship could exist between the girl and the professor. Mifsud also failed to mention that he himself prepared the draft or edited an email from Polonskaya addressed to Papadopoulos. An attempt at sexual solicitation? The fact remains that even Polonskaya has been lost: other questions to ask the Link and the Rome Prosecutor's Office …
Not only. 302 reports show that Papadopoulos expressed his willingness to actively help the FBI locate Mifsud. In the February 1 interrogation, for example, he told officers that the professor "had recently contacted him" and had "indicated that perhaps he would be traveling to Washington in February," for a conference sponsored by the Department of State (!). Precisely the occasion when the FBI managed to question him. But Papadopoulos' availability was omitted from the deeds filed by the Mueller team against him.
In any case, the professor will lose his tracks only in November 2017, continuing up to that moment to lead his usual public life made up of relationships and conferences, even abroad, without feeling in any way hunted or in danger (few months after the interrogation in Washington, he took part in an international conference in Saudi Arabia with former CIA and MI6 officials). Then, the FBI and the Mueller team had 9 months to track him down and investigate. But they have not considered doing it.
In his report, Mueller does not explicitly state that Mifsud was a Russian agent, as claimed by former FBI director Comey at the Washington Post , but alludes to it, highlighting his contacts with Russian government and intelligence figures. The prosecutor completely omits, however, Mifsud's much closer and more intense relations with Western academic, diplomatic, political and intelligence circles – NATO military personnel, former American and British intelligence officials, diplomats, ministers and Western politicians, the former Vice President of the European Parliament Pittella, who defined him as a "dear friend". If Mifsud really worked for the Russians, an incredible number of Western diplomatic, political and security personalities and institutions he had come into contact with could have been seriously compromised, a giant security breach in the United States and allied governments. Yet this hypothesis has never raised alarm, it has never been treated as a potential threat, neither by the FBI nor by other agencies.
Although the special prosecutor indicted many people during his investigation, even if only for lying to the FBI, and despite the report claiming that Mifsud also lied about his meetings with Papadopoulos, he never charged or tried to track down the Maltese professor for question him again. Asked during a congressional hearing, Mueller hid behind a "I can't answer this . " And again: if the conversations between Papadopoulos and Mifsud, reported through diplomatic channels by the Australian ambassador Downer on 26 July 2016, are really at the origin of the investigation, as always supported by the FBI, taken so seriously as to motivate, from sun, opening a counterintelligence investigation and adopting surveillance measures against a presidential candidate's campaign, why did it take six months to question the two?
As Chris Blackburn noted on Twitter yesterday, there is a very simple way to verify the good faith of the investigation: find when (and if) the British and Italian authorities have been asked to investigate Mifsud, the LCILP ( London Center of International Law Practice ) and Link Campus , organizations of which he was a member.
From another key document recently declassified , the "Electronic Communication" (EC) of the FBI with which the counterintelligence investigation called "Crossfire Hurricane" was internally announced on July 31, 2016, emerges among other things the extreme vagueness initial information.
In the same memo that Ambassador Downer had turned to the US diplomatic office in London, in which he referred to the conversation with Papadopoulos, it was emphasized that " it was not clear whether he or the Russians were referring to material acquired publicly or by other means", " It was also not clear how the Trump team reacted to the offer" and, in any case, "the reaction of the Trump team, ultimately, may have little bearing on what Russia decides to do, with or without the Trump cooperation ”.
Downer reports a "suggestion" he had felt more than two months earlier in a bar by Papadopoulos (or even reported to him by another Australian official, Erika Thompson). Papadopoulos had learned it from Professor Mifsud, who in turn had learned it in Moscow from Russian officials.
But there were no elements in Downer's statement to infer that it was the hacked emails to the National Democratic Committee. Papadopoulos never talked about “email” with the Australians. Neither Downer nor Papadopoulos ever claimed that there was talk of "email". It does not appear in the Mueller report and, now we know, not even in the memo passed by Downer and quoted in the EC. It should be noted that the Australian diplomat remembers Papadopoulos' statements in the May meeting only after more than two months, on July 26. Four days earlier, WikiLeaks had begun spreading hacked emails to the DNC. Only then does Downer remember them, perhaps linking them to that fact, even though he had hitherto considered them insignificant. Also suspicious was the fact that agent Strzok first set up and then approved his investigation by himself, initially making sure that the memo could only be seen by the participants in the case and not by other FBI officers.
A false premise, therefore, or, worse, a fabricated pretext to give official investigation coverage to a surveillance activity on the Trump campaign already underway.
Therefore, the question regarding Mifsud remains central: who is he and who was he acting on behalf of when he came into contact with Papadopoulos in a way that was anything but casual? If it were a Western intelligence asset, then this would prove that Papadopoulos was lured and framed as early as the spring of 2016, long before Crossfire Hurricane opened, and would raise suspicions that the Obama administration opened the investigation on the basis of fabricated evidence for the sole purpose of spying on the Trump Campaign.
Yesterday, on Twitter , Papadopoulos recalled that it is “from the information on Mifsud given by Italian officials that the Durham criminal investigation started. Italy is with us ”.
The post The FBI's “302” on Mifsud: an all too brief and superficial interrogation for a suspected Russian agent appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/rubriche/il-302-dellfbi-su-mifsud-un-interrogatorio-fin-troppo-breve-e-superficiale-per-un-sospetto-agente-russo/ on Thu, 03 Sep 2020 00:58:51 +0000.