What the Mueller Report Reveals About the Globe-Trotting Professor Who Spoke of ‘Dirt’ on Clinton

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The highly anticipated report by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, which was released on Thursday in redacted form, contains new details about a shadowy international professor’s role in Russia’s campaign to disrupt the 2016 presidential election.

Joseph Mifsud, a former London-based professor with Kremlin ties, was the person who told George Papadopoulos, a foreign-policy adviser to the Trump campaign, that the Russian government had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails, according to the report.

In 2017 court documents withheld Mifsud’s name, referring to him only as “the professor,” although he had been identified by The Washington Post.

The Mueller report describes Mifsud as a globe-trotting man of intrigue who connected Papadopoulos with Russians and who lied to investigators when they interviewed him in a Washington hotel lobby.

Papadopoulos later pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about his contacts with Mifsud.

Mifsud, a Malta native who worked as a professor at the London Academy of Diplomacy, “maintained various Russian contacts while living in London,” the report states. Those contacts included a former employee of the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian troll farm that carried out the Russian government’s social-media campaign to interfere in the U.S. election, investigators said. (The IRA contact’s name is redacted in the report.)

According to the report, Papadopoulos was introduced to Mifsud in 2016, during a trip to Rome, where Papadopoulos was to meet with officials affiliated with Link Campus University, a for-profit institution headed by a former Italian-government official.

Mifsud initially seemed uninterested in Papadopoulos, but the professor became more interested when he learned of Papadopoulos’s ties to the Trump campaign, Papadopoulos told investigators.

At a subsequent meeting, in London, Mifsud introduced Papadopoulos to Olga Polonskaya, a Russian woman whom Mifsud described as a “former student of his who had connections to Vladimir Putin,” the report states. Papadopoulos expected the pair to introduce him to the Russian ambassador in London, but that never happened, investigators said.

Mifsud would later connect Papadopoulos with Ivan Timofeev, a member of the Russian International Affairs Council, who discussed laying “the groundwork” for a “potential” meeting between the Trump campaign and Russian-government officials, the report states. The meeting never happened, the report says.

After a trip to Moscow, in April 2016, Mifsud met Papadopoulos in London at the Andaz Hotel. Over breakfast the professor told Papadopoulos that he had met with “high-level Russian-government officials” in Moscow and learned that they had “dirt” on Clinton.

In February 2017, when investigators interviewed Mifsud in a Washington hotel lobby, he made inaccurate statements, the report states.

“Mifsud denied that he had advance knowledge that Russia was in possession of emails damaging to candidate Clinton, stating that he and Papadopoulos had discussed cybersecurity and hacking as a larger issue and that Papadopoulos must have misunderstood their conversation,” the report says.

Papadopoulos’s own false statements to investigators “undermined investigators’ ability to challenge Mifsud” during the interview, according to the report.

Several news outlets have tried to reach Mifsud since his identity was revealed, but he is said to have disappeared.

Jack Stripling covers college leadership, particularly presidents and governing boards. Follow him on Twitter @jackstripling, or email him at jack.stripling@chronicle.com.