Two Blackberry devices used by Joseph Mifsud, the Maltese professor who helped kickstart the probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US election, are in the possession of the US Justice Department, according to lawyers for President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
According to online media reports, Mr Flynn's lawyer Sidney Powell demanded that federal prosecutors turn over the two phones which “contained imperative information to the defence of her client”.
In a court filing on Tuesday, Ms Powell claimed the phones could contain specific information related to Western intelligence being “tasked against (Flynn) likely as early as 2014 to arrange – unbeknownst to him – ‘connections’ with certain Russians that they would then use against him in their false claims.”
In 2017, Mr Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to investigators about conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
Earlier in October, US Attorney General Bill Barr flew to Italy after asking the secret service to hand over any information they had about Prof. Mifsud, suspecting that he might have been operating as an Italian or British-run spy.
The Mueller Report, first published in April, had revealed how investigators spoke to Prof. Mifsud at a Washington Hotel lobby in February 2017.
He reportedly told the Trump campaign in April 2016 that Russia had “dirt” on then candidate Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of e-mails”.
Prof. Mifsud was working at Rome's Link Campus University until 2017, when Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos was jailed for lying to the FBI.
CNN reported in 2017 that Prof. Mifsud was no longer turning up for work at the private university in Rome where he lectured.
In September last year, a judgement issued by a Sicilian court revealed that Italian police had tried and failed to track him down to serve him notice of court action filed against him by the University Consortium of Agrigento, where he once served as president.
Palermo’s court of auditors found him guilty of receiving overpayments and ordered him to pay back more than €49,000 to the University consortium.
Mifsud, 59, hasn’t been seen in public since November 2017, when he was spotted at Link Campus in Italy and spoke briefly to a reporter from Italy’s la Repubblica newspaper, Reuters reported.
Former associates of Mifsud’s said they had had no contact with him since late 2017.
In an op-ed in the Washington Post in May, former FBI director James Comey referred to Mifsud as a “Russian agent”, although he did not say why he believed that to be the case.
Gianni Pitella, a former member of the European Parliament and an Italian senator for the center-left Democratic Party, attended the same conference in Rome where Mifsud and Papadopoulos first met in 2016. He described Mifsud as sociable and well-connected, but not someone you would expect to find at the heart of international intrigue.
Prof. Mifsud spent years within the Maltese civil service and served as director of the University of Malta’s international office before branching out into academia.
He was briefly on the staff of Foreign Minister Michael Frendo in 2006 and 2007.
A senior Maltese official told Reuters he simply did not believe he had Russian contacts, especially at a high level.
"He was personally a nice guy to talk to, I would even say he was a good connector, but nothing high-level,” the official said. “He was also disorganized, he would start one thing, then move to another."