Academic at heart of Clinton 'dirt' claim vanishes, leaving trail of questionsBy Tim Lister and Nic Robertson, CNN
Updated 1540 GMT (2340 HKT) November 10, 2017
(CNN) 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.
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.
But more details are emerging of the background and contacts of the man who emerged last week as "the professor" in court filings relating to charges brought against former Trump aide George Papadopoulos.
In the US affidavit, 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, contradicting Mifsud's assertion that he never talked about Russian "dirt" on the Democratic presidential bid.
At that time, according to US officials and independent analysts, Russian agencies or proxies were rummaging around the stolen emails of both the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The intrusion would not become public for several months.
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. That chimes with Mifsud's own account -- in an interview last week with Italian newspaper La Repubblica, he refers to a discussion with the FBI.
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