Joseph Mifsud vanished more than seven years ago. Yet the Maltese professor remains the ghost at the center of one of America’s most divisive political investigations. Nearly a decade after his name first surfaced, he stands as one of the most enigmatic and consequential characters in the probe into suspected Russian election interference and the 2016 Trump campaign.

Cast by the FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team as a man with Kremlin connections, Mr. Mifsud was depicted as the catalyst for the far-reaching Russiagate investigation. It was  at an April 2016 meeting in London that Mr. Mifsud  told a low-level Trump campaign aide that Russia had  “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails, a remark that eventually reached the ears of the FBI. 

Now, with the Justice Department re-examining possible misconduct by one of the Mueller team prosecutors who built cases based on Mr. Mifsud’s alleged disclosure, the professor’s absence looms larger than ever.

Earlier this year, it was reported that the Department of Justice is investigating Aaron Zelinsky, the prosecutor who helped convict George Papadopoulos – the Trump aide with whom Mr. Mifsud allegedly shared the Russian claim – for lying to the FBI.

Mr. Zelinsky had written a memo describing Joseph Mifsud as a “suspected Russian asset,” a characterization that became central to the Russiagate story. Without Mr. Mifsud himself, however, no one has been able to verify that claim.

As the investigation faces renewed scrutiny, the man at the center of it all is still missing. Mr. Mifsud’s Swiss-based attorney, Stephan Roh, who claims to still represent the professor, tells The New York Sun that the last he heard from his client directly was “a few years ago.”

Mr. Mifsud’s Shadowy Connections

The Justice Department’s review of Aaron Zelinsky’s handling of the Papadopoulos case “is long overdue and critical to exposing Russiagate’s lies,” managing director of political strategy firm Nestpoint Associates, John Thomas, tells the Sun. “Zelinsky, a Mueller team prosecutor, painted Mifsud as a Kremlin operative to justify nailing Papadopoulos for lying about their 2016 meetings. Still, the evidence is thin.”

From his purview, the bureau’s “suspected Russian asset” label should be treated with “deep skepticism.”

Mr. Thomas says the FBI “leaned on” the professor’s appearances at the Valdai Club, a Moscow-based think tank and international forum, and on a photo of him with Russia’s U.K. ambassador, “but ignored his deep ties to Western institutions like Link Campus University, which has Italian intelligence connections.” 

Former FBI officials have defended the decision to flag Mr. Mifsud as a Russian cutout, however, pointing to his repeated contacts with Moscow-linked figures and his alleged role in transmitting sensitive information to Papadopoulos. 

The Spark That Lit Crossfire Hurricane

The roots of the Russiagate investigation lie in a breakfast meeting in London in the spring of 2016. Papadopoulos, then a little-known foreign policy adviser to President Trump’s first campaign, met the professor after connecting with him through Rome’s Link Campus University — a school with deep ties to Western intelligence services.

According to the FBI, Mr. Mifsud, who had just  returned from a conference in Moscow, told Papadopoulos that the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails. Papadopoulos later repeated the remark in an over-drinks conversation with Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, who cabled that information back to Canberra. After WikiLeaks began publishing hacked Democratic emails that summer, Australia passed the tip to Washington.

In short, what Mr. Mifsud allegedly told Papadopoulos became the FBI’s justification for launching its Russia investigation. On July 31, 2016, the Bureau formally opened “Crossfire Hurricane,” the counterintelligence probe into Trump campaign links with Russia. It was the moment that launched years of prosecutions and political warfare — and the spark was Mr. Mifsud.

The Professor Who Vanished

Mr. Mifsud vanished from public life in the fall of 2017 after published reports identified him as the unnamed “professor” in court documents tied to Papadopoulos. His romantic partner in Italy told journalists she received a final phone call on Halloween of that year — and then nothing.

A few months earlier, in August 2017, Mr. Mifsud’s passport and wallet had turned up on the Portuguese island of Madeira. The items were reportedly handed to a lost-and-found office at Madeira Airport, where they remained unclaimed for the next 17 months.

Since then, sightings have been scarce and unconfirmed. A photo that surfaced in 2018 allegedly showed him in an office at Zurich, with his eyeglasses resting on a copy of the Democratic National Committee’s lawsuit naming him, the Russian government, WikiLeaks, the Trump campaign, and others.

That lawsuit had been filed a few weeks earlier alleging a conspiracy involving the Russian government, WikiLeaks, the Trump campaign, and others to interfere in the 2016 election by hacking and disseminating stolen emails. The case was dismissed with prejudice in July 2019, meaning it cannot be refiled. 

That same year, Italian journalists claimed that Mr. Mifsud was alive and hiding in Rome, possibly under the protection of an unidentified agency. In September, the United States attorney general, William Barr, and special counsel John Durham flew to Rome. There, they reportedly heard an audio deposition in which Mr. Mifsud denied offering Papadopoulos any “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.

In November 2019, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera published a short audio recording that it had received from an anonymous source. The man on the tape identified himself as Joseph Mifsud and claimed that he was forced into hiding “until a certain someone decides he can come out.” The authenticity of the tape has not been verified.

Yet, no one has admitted to seeing Mr. Mifsud in person since the investigation began more than eight years ago; he has no known social media presence, and no court has ever been able to compel his testimony.

Mr. Durham himself admitted when he testified to Congress in 2023 that his team couldn’t find Mr. Mifsud and didn’t know if he was “alive or dead.” That stunning admission underscored just how bizarre this saga had become.

More than two years have passed since then, and both his location and his exact role in the scandal remain unknown.

Mr. Roh says his client took on “another identity”many years ago.

“Professor Mifsud was hidden in Italy in 2017 and then in France. He lived and traveled in Italy. He had another identity, and people still saw him in 2020,” he said. “He also traveled to his parents in Malta, as well as to London. He was threatened to hide and not to speak, afraid for his life.”

The nature of the claimed threat and its origin are unclear.

“He had a good career. Now? Who knows,” author Lee Smith, who has extensively documented the Russiagate scandal, tells the Sun. “I imagined it ruined his life. What always struck me is — if people really wanted to find him, paparazzi would’ve caught him in Rome or London. He worked in both places.”

A Man With Many Ties— and Few Answers

Part of what makes Mr. Mifsud so slippery is his résumé. He wasn’t just teaching English in Malta. He moved in elite circles. He helped build Link Campus University in Rome, where Western security services often sent students. He held posts at the London Academy of Diplomacy and the London Centre of International Law Practice. 

He also attended forums in Moscow, including the Valdai Discussion Club, which is closely linked to the Kremlin. He attended conferences in Brussels, London, and Washington, rubbing shoulders with diplomats, businesspeople, and intelligence veterans.

Was Mr. Mifsud a Kremlin messenger? Was he working with Western services to bait Papadopoulos? Or was he a hustling academic who exaggerated his connections to feel important? The Mueller team leaned toward the first interpretation. Papadopoulos and his defenders argue the second. Without Mr. Mifsud’s own testimony, no one can say for sure.

Durham’s Dead End

Mr. Durham spent years examining the origins of the Russia probe and criticized the FBI for confirmation bias and sloppy procedures, but he could not conclude that Crossfire Hurricane was a political setup. His team tried — and failed — to locate Joseph Mifsud, despite briefings from Italian intelligence and access to his materials, including cell phones. 

That absence is not a footnote — it is the central void in the Russiagate story. Until Mr. Mifsud reappears — or is definitively accounted for — the investigation’s first and most crucial witness remains missing, leaving the story incomplete.