Mandel Ngan/GettyROME–When Attorney General
William Barr showed up at the U.S. embassy’s Palazzo Margherita on Rome’s tony Via Veneto last week, he had two primary requests. He needed a conference room to meet high level Italian security agents where he could be sure no one was listening in. And he needed an extra chair for U.S. Attorney John Durham of Connecticut who would be sitting at his right hand side. Barr was in Rome on an under-the-radar mission that was only planned a few days in advance. An official with the embassy confirmed to The Daily Beast that they had to scramble to accommodate Barr’s sudden arrival. He had been in
Italy before, but not with such a clear motive. Barr and Durham are looking into the events that led to Robert Mueller’s
Russia investigation, and suddenly all roads were leading to Rome. The Daily Beast has learned that Barr and Durham were especially interested in what the Italian secret service knew about Joseph Mifsud, the erstwhile professor from Malta who had allegedly promised then candidate Donald Trump’s campaign aide George Papadopoulos he could deliver
Russian “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. The Italian Justice Ministry public records show that Mifsud had applied for
police protection in Italy after disappearing from Link University where he worked and, in doing so, had given a taped deposition to explain just why people might want to harm him. A source in the Italian Ministry of Justice, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The Daily Beast that Barr and Durham were played the tape. A second source within the Italian government also confirmed to The Daily Beast that Barr and Durham were shown other evidence the Italians had on Mifsud. Ever since
Robert Mueller concluded his probe in March 2019, Barr has worked to blunt its impact—and investigate the investigators behind it. Barr assigned Durham to look into the Mueller probe’s origins. And the Attorney General’s name is listed in the whistleblower complaint about the July 25 call Trump made to the Ukrainian president to pressure him into investigating political rival Joe Biden. According to the complaint, Barr was directly involved in the president’s attempt to “solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.” The minutiae of his involvement are feeding a scandal gripping
Washington that changes by the nano-second. Inside the Call: How Trump Pushed
Ukraine to Probe BidenThe U.S. Department of Justice did not return numerous emails and calls for clarification about Barr, Durham, and Mifsud. But they did issue a statement on Monday confirming that the
American legal team had been in the eternal city. “As the Department of Justice has previously announced, a team led by U.S. Attorney John Durham is investigating the origins of the U.S. counterintelligence probe of the Trump 2016 presidential campaign,” Kerri Kupec, the
Justice Department spokesperson said in a statement. “Mr. Durham is gathering information from numerous sources, including a number of foreign countries. At Attorney General Barr’s request, the President has contacted other countries to ask them to introduce the Attorney General and Mr. Durham to appropriate officials.” The Italian intelligence community had Mifsud on their radar for some years before he got involved in the Trump campaign’s troubles. His affiliations with both the Link University of Rome and
London Center of International Law Practice—both often affiliated with western diplomacy and foreign intelligence agencies—made him an easy target. So did the slew of apartments he owned in Malta that are allegedly tied to a racket involving Russians buying Maltese passports for cheap. Rich Russians Still Buying Passports in Racket Daphne Caruana Galizia Died ExposingWhat Mifsud did or didn’t know about Clinton’s emails is still murky; what Barr and Durham were privy to is even less clear. Papadopoulos has distanced himself from the professor, tweeting just this week that he “exposed Mifsud’s connections to Italian intelligence” even though the Italians were watching him long before they parted ways.Mifsud met Papadopoulos through his Italian wife Simona Mangiante, a lawyer and part-time lingerie model who had hoped to launch her acting career with a role playing French femme fatale Brigitte Bardot in an American film. Mangiante told The Daily Beast last year that she met the professor doing some legal consulting for one of his classes. His ties to Russia seemed potentially useful to her husband, who was then an integral part of the Trump campaign’s foreign policy advisory panel at the time. Before he disappeared, Mifsud said he had met Papadopoulos “three or four times,” helping to facilitate connections between “official and unofficial sources” in Italy, Russia, and Ukraine. He denied any wrongdoing but went into hiding–either on his own or through the Italian protective services—in 2017 and has only been seen in sporadic photos since. Several mainstream Italian newspapers on Tuesday reported that Mifsud is cooperating with Barr and Durham’s investigation and some even suggested he met them in person in Rome last week. The Daily Beast reached Stephan Roh, Mifsud’s Swiss lawyer, by phone Tuesday who said he hadn’t seen his client “for quite some time” but that he “doubted” he would show his face in Rome. The sources in Rome who confirmed that Barr and Durham came to learn more about Mifsud also told The Daily Beast that they expected
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to meet the same intelligence agencies on his state visit that began Tuesday. Pompeo is meeting the Italian president, the prime minister, and the Pope while in Rome. His official mandate is to discuss Libya,
China trade, and
sanctions on Russia, which Italy does not support. Pompeo will also be spending time with the U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Callista Gingrich and her husband Newt. The Secretary of State is giving a keynote address at one of the ambassador’s events on religious freedom at the Vatican, and has arranged some free time for a private viewing of the ancient Roman colosseum. He will briefly visit the Umbrian hamlet of Valle Peligna, where his grandfather is from and where, perhaps coincidentally, Madonna’s Italian family also has roots. He is then heading to Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Greece before returning to Washington.