Joseph Mifsud (born 1960) is a British/Maltese academic, who had dual citizenship in the United Kingdom and Malta. In 2016, he became involved with George Papadopoulos, an advisor to the Donald Trump presidential campaign, and was later accused of being a link between that campaign and Russia. In 2018, he was described as missing, and an Italian court listed his location as "residence unknown". According to media reports, he was in Rome as of April 2019.
Education
Mifsud holds a bachelor's degree in education from the University of Malta (1982) and a master's degree in education from the University of Padua (1989). He was awarded a PhD in 1995 from Queen's University Belfast; his thesis was titled Managing Educational Reform: A Comparative Approach from Malta (and Northern Ireland); a Headteachers' Perspective.
Career
Mifsud assisted in the 1999 founding of Link Campus University (a subsidiary of the University of Malta with links to Italian intelligence), who was then the head of the university's education department. Mifsud acted as its "director of international relations".
From 2006 to 2008, Mifsud served as the chef de cabinet of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Malta. He later became a principal in the London Centre of International Law Practice (LCILP). In 2008, he was named President of the Euro-Mediterranean University of Slovenia (EMUNI). At least as early as 2010, he began making numerous trips to Russia. He was a professorial teaching fellow at the University of Stirling in Scotland, as well as director of the London Academy of Diplomacy, where he served as director from 2012 until it closed in 2016. The academy was partnered with the University of Stirling. He has also served as president of the University Consortium of the Province of Agrigento in Sicily; in September 2018, an Italian court ordered him to repay the Consortium 49,000 euros ($56,700) in overpayments.
As of 2017, Mifsud was a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). He regularly attended meetings of the Valdai Discussion Club, an annual conference held in Russia, backed by the Kremlin and attended by Vladimir Putin. In April 2016, Mifsud spoke at a Valdai Club panel in Moscow alongside Switzerland-based lawyer Stephan Roh. Roh, who has been associated with Russian oligarchs and who owns a 5% stake in Link Campus University, has been described by George Papadopoulos's wife as Mifsud's partner, best friend, and funder.
According to the Mueller Report, released in 2019 after Mifsud's disappearance, Mifsud "maintained various Russian contacts while living in London", including an unnamed person (name redacted), who was a former staff member of the Internet Research Agency, the Russian troll farm based in Saint Petersburg. Mifsud had previously denied having any contact with the Russian government, saying "I am an academic, I do not even speak Russian."
Connection to George Papadopoulos
In March 2016, shortly after George Papadopoulos was named as a foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign, Mifsud met Papadopoulos in Rome. They later met again in London, where – according to Papadopoulos – Mifsud claimed "substantial connections to Russian officials" and introduced Papadopoulos to a Russian woman that he falsely claimed was Putin's niece. At a meeting in April, Mifsud told Papadopoulos that he had learned that the Russian government had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. Mifsud has acknowledged meeting Papadopoulos, but denied Papadopoulos's specific allegations. On 10 May 2016, Papadopoulos repeated the information to the Australian High Commissioner in London, Alexander Downer, who was accompanied by Australian diplomat Erika Thompson, that "the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion from Russia that it could assist this process with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Mrs Clinton (and President Obama)." Downer later reported to American authorities that Papadopoulos had apparently known about Russia's theft of Democratic National Committee emails before it was publicly reported. Papadopoulos denies having told Downer this. The FBI then launched an investigation into possible connections between Russia and the Trump campaign. Mifsud was interviewed by the FBI in February 2017 while visiting the United States to speak at a conference. Mifsud left the United States on 11 February 2017.