Who is Joseph Mifsud? That question got a lot of attention Wednesday after Republican Rep. Jim Jordan pinned down Robert Mueller in the House Judiciary Committee hearing, asking the former Special Counsel why Mifsud wasn’t charged with lying to investigators. Mueller’s report mentions Mifsud, a former Maltese diplomat and now a London-based academic, 87 times. It was Mifsud who first told Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos that Russia had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. Papadopoulos later repeated this to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, who then reported it to the FBI, thus creating the pretext for opening an investigation into the Trump campaign. Misfud’s role in all this is, according to a report in The Hill by John Solomon, a key question being investigated by John Durham, appointed by Attorney General William Barr to explore the origins of the RussiaGate story.

Jordan’s questioning of Mueller in Wednesday’s hearing was brutal:

JORDAN: You gave us the answer. Page 192 of the report you tell us who told him. Joseph Mifsud. Joseph Mifsud is the guy who told Papadopoulos. The mysterious professor who lives in Rome and London. Works and teaches at two different universities. This is the guy who told Papadopoulos. He’s the guy who starts it all. And when the FBI interviews him, he lies three times and yet you don’t charge him with a crime. You charge Rick Gates for false statements. You charge Paul Manafort for false statements. You charge Michael Cohen with false statements. You charge Michael Flynn, a three star general with false statements. But the guy who puts the country through this whole saga starts it all for three years we’ve lived this now–he lies and you guys don’t charge him. And I’m curious as to why.

MUELLER: Well, I can’t get into it and — and it’s obvious, I think that we can’t get into charging decisions.

JORDAN: When the FBI interviewed him in February — FBI interviews him in February. When the special counsel’s interviews Mifsud, did he lie to you guys too?

MUELLER: Can’t get into that.

JORDAN: Did you interview Mifsud?

MUELLER: Can’t get into that.

JORDAN: Is Mifsud western intelligence or Russian intelligence?

MUELLER: Can’t get into that.

JORDAN: A lot of things you can’t get into. What’s interesting — you can charge 13 Russians no one has ever heard of, no one has ever seen, no one is ever going to hear of them, no one is every going to see them — you can charge them–you can charge all kinds of people who are around the president with false statements but the guy who launches every — the guy who puts this whole story in motion you can’t charge him. I think that’s amazing.

MUELLER: (INAUDIBLE) I’m not certain I–I agree with your characterization.

JORDAN: Well, I’m reading from your report. Mifsud told Papadopoulos. Papadopoulos tells the diplomat. The diplomat tells the FBI. The FBI opens the investigation July 31st, 2016 and here we are three years later, July of 2019. The country’s been put through this and this central figure who launches it all — lies to us and you guys don’t hunt him down and interview him again and you don’t charge him with a crime.

Here’s the big secret that Jim Jordan was driving at: Joseph Mifsud may have been working for U.S. intelligence — perhaps indirectly, on the payroll of a CIA front — and in his contact with Papadopoulos, may have been acting as an agent provocateur. In other words, the CIA may have been using Mifsud to test whether Papadopoulos was vulnerable to exploitation, and this “Russia has dirt on Hillary” business was part of the test. When Mueller says he “can’t get into that,” what he’s saying is that he’s forbidden by law from discussing “sources and methods” of U.S. intelligence, and this is a huge clue that the CIA was somehow involved in RussiaGate — a phony hoax that Hillary Clinton used during the 2016 campaign to smear Trump as Vladimir Putin’s “puppet.”

Who was calling the shots behind the scenes in 2016, when all this shadowy stuff was going on around Papadopoulos and Trump aide Carter Page? What was the role of Fusion GPS in this? As Ace of Spades remarked yesterday, it seems that dossier compiler “Christopher Steele provided cover as a front man for conspiracy theories first adduced by [Clinton supporters] Sidney Blumenthal and Cody Shearer.” This would mean that the true origin of the RussiaGate hoax was the Clinton campaign itself, and if it is true that Russian intelligence hacked the DNC emails — well, how and why did that happen? Were the Russians doing this to help the Trump campaign? Or was there some ulterior motive?

We should soon start getting answers to some of these questions, and I don’t think the Democrats will be pleased by what we learn.







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