It's not just Rudy who's still committing acts of virtual treason

One of the strongest arguments made by experts testifying against President Trump is that he poses a present and continuing threat to our democracy. By adopting the stance that extorting a foreign leader into helping him rig the election was perfectly fine, Trump has confirmed he’ll keep using the levers of government to continue to corrupt it on his behalf.

[...]

The latest nefarious doings of none other than William P. Barr and Rudolph W. Giuliani have now forcefully underscored this very point.

[...]

Two new investigative reports demonstrate that Barr and Giuliani are, in effect, continuing to carry out elements of the very same corrupt scheme for which Trump is currently getting impeached. Their activities have been described as “brazen,” but the truth is worse: They demonstrate with great clarity that Trump’s efforts to corrupt our political system will continue — a reminder of why he’s being impeached in the first place.

The Post reports that Barr has hit a major snag in his efforts to validate Trump’s claim that the investigation into Russian sabotage of the 2016 election was a hoax. Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department inspector general, privately asked Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham, who’s executing Barr’s review of the origins of that investigation, to validate a key element of Trumpworld’s “theory” of those origins — and he did not.

[...]

Central to this is the idea that [Joseph Mifsud] the Maltese professor who first told a Trump adviser about dirt gathered by Russia on Hillary Clinton — which launched the original FBI probe — was a U.S. agent setting up the Trump campaign. Horowitz, who is also examining the probe’s origins, has reportedly determined that he was not, and asked Durham — and intelligence agencies — to produce evidence to the contrary. They couldn’t.

It’s true that Horowitz will also reportedly announce serious irregularities with the FBI’s original handling of the investigation, and Trump’s propagandists will hype this to the skies. But the bottom line is Horowitz is expected to conclude that the investigation’s basis was legitimate, and while we don’t know what Durham will conclude, it seems clear he’s finding little to validate Trumpworld’s wild theories.

The key point here is that Barr, who is gearing up to cast doubt on Horowitz’s conclusions, is continuing to use the levers of government to carry out Trump’s overall corrupt project.

[...]

Even as Trump is getting impeached for using the power of his office to falsify the story of his corruption of our last election and to corrupt the next one, he’s still trying to accomplish both goals. And in Barr’s case, he’s cheerfully continuing to rely on the manipulation of the levers of government to do so.

  WaPo

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Mifsud going back to the Senate Intel Committee

I thought this guy had disappeared.  Apparently someone found him.  You may recall this is the guy who told George Papadopolous about the existence of stolen Hillary Clinton emails.

Mifsud disappeared after he was identified as the unnamed professor alleged by FBI investigators in court documents unsealed in October 2017 to have told Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos that the Russians had “dirt” on Clinton in the form of thousands of emails, months before the Democrats themselves were aware that their computer system had been hacked.

He has not been seen in public since November that year. His former girlfriend in Ukraine says he disappeared, prosecutors in Italy investigating a decade-old case couldn’t locate him, and US investigators have complained they weren’t able to interrogate the professor thoroughly when he was last in the US in Feb. 2017. Democratic National Committee lawyers even suggested he may be dead.

[...]

Spokespeople for the Senate intelligence committee declined to comment, and BuzzFeed News has been unable to independently verify this claim [that Mifsud will testify before the Senate Intel Committee].

  Buzzfeed

Looks like Natasha Bertrand did that herself.

Mifsud’s interactions with Papadopoulos reportedly kickstarted the FBI investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election — and remain one of the great mysteries in special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing probe.

Should the Maltese academic suddenly reappear in public after more than a year to testify before the Senate, it could be a hugely significant moment in Mueller’s investigation.

Roh claims that Mifsud has done nothing wrong, and was set up — and denies having ever told Papadopoulos the Russians had dirt on Clinton.

[...]

Since his sentencing, Papadopoulos has repeatedly speculated on Twitter — without providing evidence — that he was targeted by British and Australian intelligence as part of a plot to sabotage the Trump campaign.

Mifsud acknowledged in the interview with the Italian newspaper in Nov. 2017 that he met Papadopoulos “three or four times,” and facilitated connections between "official and unofficial sources," but denied any wrongdoing.

UPDATE:

Here comes another book on the Mueller investigation

“The Faking of RUSSIA-GATE: The Papadopoulos Case” [by Stephan Roh] is the latest in a stream of books aiming to capitalize on the chaos of this political moment. But it sheds new light on the expansive nature of Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s election interference and possible ties between President Donald Trump’s campaign team and Moscow. It also highlights Mueller’s interest in answering one of the probe’s biggest outstanding questions: whether the campaign knew in advance that Russia planned to interfere in the election.

[...]

In the spring of 2016, [shadowy professor, Joseph] Mifsud told a young Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, that Russia had “dirt” on Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails,” according to the special counsel’s statement of the offense against Papadopoulos, who was indicted for misleading federal agents about his conversations with Mifsud. [...] It is still not clear how Mifsud seemed to know in advance that Russia sought to compromise Clinton’s candidacy.

The lawyer allegedly questioned by Mueller’s team, Stephan Roh, is a German multimillionaire with ties to Russia. He hired Mifsud as a “business-development consultant” in 2015, and is Mifsud’s “partner and best friend” and “the money behind him,” Papadopoulos’s wife, Simona Mangiante, who worked for Mifsud briefly, told me.

He’s also in the nuclear-energy business: He acquired a small British nuclear consulting firm from scientist Dr. John Harbottle in 2005 [...]. Within three years, Severnvale Nuclear Services’ turnover went from under $100,000 to $44 million, per the BBC.

[...]

Roh and his co-author Thierry Pastor, who also knows Mifsud, write in the book that, upon arriving in New York City with his family in October 2017, “one of the co-authors” was “fished from the passport control” line at John F. Kennedy airport while his family “was retained with armed police force.” [...] He was then interrogated for “hours,” they write, by “a team of Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigating Russia-Gate.” The book alleges that he and his family were then “observed, followed, and taped, at every moment and every place in New York” by the FBI and that his family was assigned to “special rooms at the hotel” while security personnel “patrolled the corridors.”

[...]

The book further alleges that Mifsud is not a Russian spy but is actually “deeply embedded in the network of Western Intelligence Services.” Papadopoulos, too, is a “western intelligence operative,” the authors assert, who was “placed” in the Trump campaign by the FBI.

  The Atlantic

If true, I'm downgrading my already low esteem of the FBI. Carter Page is a nutjob. It actually seems plausible, however, because Page has said a lot of weird shit without any seeming concern for the ramifications. And he went before the House Intel Committee without a lawyer.

In that sense, the book is similar to one written recently by another obscure player detained and questioned by Mueller’s team earlier this year: Ted Malloch, a controversial London-based academic with ties to Trump associates Roger Stone and Nigel Farage. In his book The Plot to Destroy Trump: How the Deep State Fabricated the Russia Dossier to Subvert the President, Malloch argues that the apparent covert intelligence activity connected to the Trump campaign was not Russian, but Western.

Please don't let this shit be true. We know the intel agencies did not like Trump during the campaign. If they set up Trump and that becomes known, we can kiss our asses goodbye. There was enough Trump criminality and sleaze for him to do himself in without being set up. If he gets off because of something that stupid...Jesus wept.

Mifsud has virtually disappeared since his name was made public late last year. In their book, Roh and Pastor say that “the head of the Italian secret services contacted the President of LINK Campus, Vincenzo Scotti,” and recommended that Mifsud “disappear.” Since then, Mifsud “has been requested to hide, not to communicate, and not to speak to the press,” Roh and Pastor write. “He has been ‘put away’ and threatened to stay quiet.”

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Central character in Russia probe has disappeared

The Maltese professor [Joseph Mifsud], who allegedly delivered word of Hillary Clinton’s stolen emails to Donald Trump's campaign [via George Papadopoulos], is an authentically mysterious figure, his true role and ties to Russian intelligence unclear.

[...]

His biography disappeared from one university where he taught and he quit his job at another university. His email and cell phones went dead. And politicians, colleagues and journalists can't find him.

Neither can Anna, his 31-year-old Ukrainian fiancee, who says he is the father of her newborn child.

[...]

[Mifsud] cut off all contact with Anna, including phone calls and WhatsApp messages. That silence has held, even six weeks after the daughter Anna says he fathered was born.

“He never helped me,” she said. “Only talk and promises.”

[...]

The result is new information about Mifsud’s activities, including his claim of having dined with Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister.

“He said, ‘I have dinner with Lavrov tonight. Lavrov is my friend. Lavrov this, Lavrov that,’” Anna said. “He even show me picture with Lavrov.”

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In a series of WhatsApp messages sent in May 2017, Mifsud also told Anna he was in Saudi Arabia at the same time as President Donald Trump’s visit, and in Sicily, Italy, for the G7 Summit.

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Mifsud acknowledged in an interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica published last November that he met former Trump campaign aide Papadopoulos “three or four times,” and facilitated connections between "official and unofficial sources," but denied any wrongdoing.

  Buzzfeed

But went to ground. Do you think Mueller has him secreted away? Or is he hiding out on his own? Hiding from Anna and the baby? Or has something untoward happened to him because he knows too much?

In late October 2015, Mifsud proposed to her. Anna says they were at a restaurant overlooking the Kremlin in Moscow celebrating Anna’s sister’s birthday. The Maltese academic asked Anna to marry him at the restaurant, and gave her a ring.

[...]

“He came to celebrate a New Year, birthdays, my sister’s baby. He knew all my family. Something we celebrate, he would come. We had a good relationship,” [Anna] said.

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“We had a plan to live in Rome. We spoke about this, but only speak,” Anna, who works in marketing, said. “He tell me I want a baby with you, I want a family with you.”

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When the couple split up for a few months in 2016, Mifsud sent her an email asking her to return the ring and handbags, one of which was a Chanel handbag that Mifsud had bought for her during a visit to Rome in the spring 2015.

Pretty formal signature for a man who gave a woman an engagement ring. Maybe that's for any future lawsuit.

[Anna] provided access to her entire WhatsApp history with Mifsud. She also shared dozens of photos of the couple together, including in Ukraine and Russia. BuzzFeed News has seen many photos of the baby and of Anna during different stages of her pregnancy and at the clinic where she gave birth. Anna also said that she wants to do a DNA test to prove that Mifsud is the father of the baby.

He'll have to turn up first.

Anna said she and Mifsud last met in person in Kiev in early April 2017. The academic told her then that he had recently been questioned by the FBI in the US, she said.

“He told me he was in his hotel room when he was called downstairs by reception. It was the FBI. He said they wanted to talk about connections he set up between people in Britain and Russia.”

“He said his phone was probably being checked,” Anna added.

[...]

After finding out that she was pregnant, according to WhatsApp messages seen by BuzzFeed News, Mifsud repeatedly told Anna he really wanted to see her and promised to visit her soon, but he never did, often making excuses or citing health reasons.

[...]

Mifsud at first expressed “shock” at the news of Anna’s pregnancy. He asked if she slept with anyone during a recent work trip she’d made to Denmark and Norway, and whether she wanted to keep the baby.

But in later messages, he put his initial reaction down to being surprised and told Anna that he was “super excited” and that the “child will have great parents.”

[...]

But there were also signs that Mifsud was not as enthusiastic as he portrayed himself, and the tone of their messages changed in the final months of her pregnancy. The professor stopped answering the phone and would reply only to Anna’s WhatsApp messages, saying he was ill with heart problems or in the hospital, but promising to fly to her as soon as given the green light.

[...]

In late October, he told her in a message that he was “fighting to live.”

Yeah, he could be hiding from Anna.

Just days later, on Nov. 1, one day after Papadopoulos’s guilty plea was unsealed in Washington, La Repubblica published an interview with him at the Rome university where he was working, in which he acknowledged being the unnamed professor referenced in the court documents in which investigators allege that Mifsud told Papadopoulos that the Russians had dirt on Clinton. The journalist who did the interview said in an email that it had taken place the previous day.

[...]

According to court documents, Mifsud told Papadopoulos that the Russians had thousands of emails from Democrats in April 2016, two months before the Democrats themselves were aware that their computer system had been hacked. Mifsud told Papadopoulos he’d learned of the emails during a trip to Russia, but who told him is unknown.

And now, he's disappeared. Just what we needed. More mystery in the Russia probe.

It was the "coffee boy"

If [George] Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. and is now a cooperating witness, was the improbable match that set off a blaze that has consumed the first year of the Trump administration, his saga is also a tale of the Trump campaign in miniature. He was brash, boastful and underqualified, yet he exceeded expectations. And, like the campaign itself, he proved to be a tantalizing target for a Russian influence operation.

[...]

The information that Mr. Papadopoulos gave to the Australians answers one of the lingering mysteries of the past year: What so alarmed American officials to provoke the F.B.I. to open a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign months before the presidential election?

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It was not, as Mr. Trump and other politicians have alleged, a dossier compiled by a former British spy hired by a rival campaign. Instead, it was firsthand information from one of America’s closest intelligence allies.

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Exactly how much Mr. Papadopoulos said [during a night of heavy drinking] at the Kensington Wine Rooms with the Australian, Alexander Downer, is unclear. But two months later, when leaked Democratic emails began appearing online, Australian officials passed the information about Mr. Papadopoulos to their American counterparts, according to four current and former American and foreign officials with direct knowledge of the Australians’ role.

  NYT

So all that GOP/Trumpette squealing about "the dossier is fake! the dossier was paid for by Clinton!" is just more distraction and hopeful muddying of the waters in an attmpt to discredit Mueller's investigation. The Steel dossier is only one bit of information that was brought into the mix after the investigation had already begun.

I assume Mr. Downer has long since been interviewed by Mueller, and I suppose the worthless Congressional committees investigating the deal will be asking to see him now.

F.B.I. officials disagreed in 2016 about how aggressively and publicly to pursue the Russia inquiry before the election. But there was little debate about what seemed to be afoot.

[...]

Interviews and previously undisclosed documents show that Mr. Papadopoulos played a critical role in this drama and reveal a Russian operation that was more aggressive and widespread than previously known.

[...]

Mr. Papadopoulos, then an ambitious 28-year-old from Chicago, was working as an energy consultant in London when the Trump campaign, desperate to create a foreign policy team, named him as an adviser in early March 2016. His political experience was limited to two months on Ben Carson’s presidential campaign before it collapsed.

The company you keep, right? I don't think it was Carson who foisted Papadopoulos off on the Trump campaign. At any rate, it was Sam Clovis who actually brought him on board. (Clovis also brought on Carter Page. I imagine Clovis, who had to withdraw as the nominee for heading the Dept. of Agriculture earlier this year, is persona non grata in Trump circles these days.)

[D]uring his job interview with Sam Clovis, a top early campaign aide, he saw an opening. He was told that improving relations with Russia was one of Mr. Trump’s top foreign policy goals, according to court papers, an account Mr. Clovis has denied.

Clovis was interviewed by Mueller's team and testified before the grand jury at the end of October. Is he still denying that assertion? Do they make orange jumpsuits that large?

In a May 4, 2016, interview with The Times of London, Mr. Papadopoulos called on Prime Minister David Cameron to apologize to Mr. Trump for criticizing his remarks on Muslims as “stupid” and divisive. “Say sorry to Trump or risk special relationship, Cameron told,” the headline read. Mr. Clovis, the national campaign co-chairman, severely reprimanded Mr. Papadopoulos for failing to clear his explosive comments with the campaign in advance.

From then on, Mr. Papadopoulos was more careful with the press — though he never regained the full trust of Mr. Clovis or several other campaign officials.

If this comes up in trial, I assume the Trump lawyers will be painting Papadopoulos as a loose cannon who went off without permission in whatever attempts he made to work with the Russians.

In late April, at a London hotel, [Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor who had valuable contacts with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs] told Mr. Papadopoulos that he had just learned from high-level Russian officials in Moscow that the Russians had “dirt” on Mrs. Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails,” according to court documents. Although Russian hackers had been mining data from the Democratic National Committee’s computers for months, that information was not yet public. Even the committee itself did not know.

Whether Mr. Papadopoulos shared that information with anyone else in the campaign is one of many unanswered questions. He was mostly in contact with the campaign over emails. The day after Mr. Mifsud’s revelation about the hacked emails, he told [Trump aide Stephen] Miller in an email only that he had “interesting messages coming in from Moscow” about a possible trip. The emails obtained by The Times show no evidence that Mr. Papadopoulos discussed the stolen messages with the campaign.

And yet, he told an Australian diplomat? Seems a little unlikely.

It is also not clear why, after getting the information in May, the Australian government waited two months to pass it to the F.B.I. In a statement, the Australian Embassy in Washington declined to provide details about the meeting or confirm that it occurred.

It isn't unreasonable to think that the Australian diplomat passed the information to his counterpart -  an American diplomat - not the FBI. And now we're getting into some deep water where, if true, the question would have to be: why didn't the American diplomat immediately pass the information to the FBI? Who would an American diplomat report to? State, right? And who was Secretary of State at the time? John Kerry. Did they huddle with Clinton about the information? (Remember that Clinton accused Trump of being a Russian puppet during the debates.)

I'm off on a slight speculating tangent here, but I don't think it sounds unreasonable. In fact, I think it sounds more reasonable than that the Australian diplomat had the information and held it for two months and then told it to the FBI. I don't think that's how it would work. He wouldn't go directly to the FBI.  He's in the diplomatic system.  That's where he'd go.

Once the information Mr. Papadopoulos had disclosed to the Australian diplomat reached the F.B.I., the bureau opened an investigation that became one of its most closely guarded secrets.

[...]

Issuing subpoenas or questioning people, for example, could cause the investigation to burst into public view in the final months of a presidential campaign.

It could also tip off the Russian government, which might try to cover its tracks.

[...]

Senior agents did not discuss it at the daily morning briefing, a classified setting where officials normally speak freely about highly sensitive operations.

Besides the information from the Australians, the investigation was also propelled by intelligence from other friendly governments, including the British and Dutch.

Curiouser and curiouser. What did those countries' spies come up with?

There's some really strange shit going on. This is going to be the mother of all stories when it's finished.

UPDATE 1/2/18:

The ambassador to the United States Joe Hockey personally steered Australia's dealings with the FBI on explosive revelations of Russian hacking during last year's presidential campaign in a sign of how politically sensitive the Australian government regarded the bombshell discovery, Fairfax Media understands.

It is also understood there is now annoyance and frustration in Canberra that the High Commissioner to Britain Alexander Downer has been outed through leaks by US officials as the source of information that played a role in sparking an FBI probe into the Trump campaign's dealings with Moscow.

[...]

Mr Downer conveyed the conversation to Canberra via an official cable, though apparently not immediately – perhaps because he did not take the 28-year-old adviser's claims altogether seriously until the hacked emails were released by Wikileaks in late July.

  Sydney Morning Herald

I suppose that is an alternate explanation to mine. But mine makes more sense. [Laughing emoticon]

Mr Hockey is believed to have been involved in discussions with the FBI, indicating the Australian government was keenly alive to its political sensitivity.

[...]

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is planning a trip to the United States in February, Fairfax Media understands. Mr Turnbull said on Monday he was "not at all" worried that Australia's role in sparking the investigation that has become a consuming headache for Mr Trump would damage his relationship with the President. Beyond that he refused to comment.

UPDATE 1/5/18:

Along with the Aussies and the Brits, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, France and Estonia also provided intelligence to the Top Secret investigation.

  Chicago Sun Times

More Russia collusion intrigue

It just keeps growing.

Joseph Mifsud, the Maltese academic suspected of being a link between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, was once a regular on the foreign policy circuit, attending conferences the world over.

[...]

[Trump campaign staffer turned FBI informant George] Papadopoulos claims Mifsued -- referred to as "Foreign Contact 1" -- told him in April 2016 that the Russians had "thousands of emails" relating to Hillary Clinton.

An associate also told CNN that he repeatedly bragged about how Moscow had "compromising material" on the Clinton campaign in spring 2016.

[...]

The associate, who spoke to CNN at length, also said that Mifsud told him that he had been interviewed by the FBI while on a visit to the US earlier this year.

[...]

Now, after being identified as a key figure in the US special counsel investigation into Russian influence over the 2016 US presidential election, Mifsud has gone to ground.

Last Thursday he disappeared from the private university in Rome where he teaches. Repeated attempts to reach him since have been unsuccessful, though he appears to have read some messages from CNN.

[...]

Last week, Mifsud described Papadopoulos' claim that he knew about Russia's material on Clinton as "baloney."

"I absolutely exclude the fact that I spoke of secrets regarding Hillary Clinton," he told La Repubblica.

Those were his last words in public on the subject.

  CNN

His English ain't too good, boss.

So, is "The Professor" on the lam, held in an FBI safe house, or possibly dead? How many books will be written in the future about the Trump presidency/cabal/crime organization? Movies?

Continue reading for more information on "The Professor".

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.