Updated (10/30/2017, 2:52 p.m.) with news that The Washington Post had identified the professor.
Newly released court documents reveal that a person described only as a “professor” may have played the go-between for an adviser to the Trump campaign and the Russian government, according to The New York Times.
Little is known about the academic other than the brief descriptions provided in the court documents.
The newspaper reported that George Papadopoulos, the adviser in question, spoke in 2016 with the professor, who claimed to know that the Russian government had intelligence on Hillary Clinton.
The documents come on the heels of the news that a former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was indicted on felony charges as part of the investigation led by Robert Mueller, the Department of Justice’s independent counsel. Mr. Papadopoulos has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the professor. The Times tried to contact Mr. Papadopoulos, but didn’t receive a response.
“The professor told defendant Papadopoulos, as defendant Papadopoulos later described to the FBI, that ‘they [the Russians] have dirt on her,’” the court documents read. “The Russians had emails of Clinton”; “they have thousands of emails.”
So what else do we know about this professor? According to the documents, he is based in London, and he took interest in Mr. Papadopoulos only after learning that the latter had a connection to Mr. Trump’s campaign. “Initially, the professor seemed uninterested in defendant Papadopoulos,” the documents state. “However, after defendant Papadopoulos informed the professor about his joining the campaign, the professor appeared to take great interest in defendant Papadopoulos.”
The documents also reveal that the professor is close to the Russian government, and allegedly introduced Mr. Papadopoulos to a woman — referred to in the court documents as “the female Russian national” — said to be a relative of the Russian president Vladimir V. Putin. However, Mr. Papadopoulos later learned that was false.
It wouldn’t be the first time something the professor promised to Mr. Papadopoulos failed to materialize. “In addition, while defendant Mr. Papadopoulos expected that the professor and the female Russian national would introduce him to the Russian ambassador in London, they never did,” says a footnote in the court documents.
The professor did appear to introduce Mr. Papadopoulos to a member of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And in April, over a breakfast with Mr. Papadopoulos in Washington, D.C., the professor claimed to meet with several “high-level Russian government officials,” and learned “the Russians had obtained ‘dirt’ on then-candidate Clinton.”
And the professor, according to the court documents, appeared to serve as a liaison between the Russian government and Mr. Papadopoulos. “We will continue to liaise through you with the Russian counterparts in terms of what is needed for a high-level meeting of Mr. Trump with the Russian Federation,” the professor is said to have written to Mr. Papadopoulos.
It’s unclear from the documents where the professor is employed, though at one point he appears to refer to members of the Russian government as “colleagues.” And if the account is true, the professor had the power to arrange meetings.
“I have just talked to my colleagues from the MFA [Ministry of Foreign Affairs],” the professor wrote. “The[y] are open for cooperation. One of the options is to make a meeting for you at the North America Desk, if you are in Moscow.”
Though the professor was unidentified in the court documents, The Washington Post on Monday reported that the unnamed professor was Joseph Mifsud, an academic said to be the director of the London Academy of Diplomacy.
The Post reported that it contacted Mr. Mifsud in August to ask if he had any ties to Russia, and that he denied any connection. He didn’t return the newspaper’s request for comment on Monday.
In 2011, The Chronicle interviewed Mr. Mifsud, in his capacity as then-president of the Euro-Mediterranean University, for an article on how globalization was changing university consortia.
Chris Quintana is a breaking-news reporter. Follow him on Twitter @cquintanadc or email him at chris.quintana@chronicle.com.
