Barr Went to Rome to Hear a Secret Tape From Joseph Mifsud, the Professor Who Helped Ignite the Rus

[riversedge]

Source: thedailybeast




The U.S. attorney general traveled to Italy to meet with Italian secret service agents—and, potentially, undermine the Mueller investigation.

Updated 10.02.19 5:04AM ET


ROME—When Attorney General William Barr showed up at the U.S. embassy’s Palazzo Margherita here on tony Via Veneto last week, he had two primary requests. He needed a conference room to meet high-level Italian security agents where he could be sure no one was listening in. And he needed an extra chair for U.S. Attorney John Durham of Connecticut, who would be sitting in as his right-hand man.

Barr was in Rome on an under-the-radar mission that was only planned a few days in advance. An official with the embassy confirmed to The Daily Beast that they had to scramble to accommodate Barr’s sudden arrival. He had been in Italy before, but not with such a clear motive. Barr and Durham are looking into the events that led to Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, and suddenly all roads were leading to Rome.

The Daily Beast has learned that Barr and Durham were especially interested in what the Italian secret service knew about Joseph Mifsud, the erstwhile professor from Malta who had allegedly promised then-candidate Donald Trump’s campaign aide George Papadopoulos he could deliver Russian “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. The Italian justice ministry’s public records show that Mifsud had applied for police protection in Italy after disappearing from Link University, where he worked and, in doing so, had given a taped deposition to explain just why people might want to harm him.

A source in the Italian Ministry of Justice, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The Daily Beast that Barr and Durham were played the tape. A second source within the Italian government also confirmed to The Daily Beast that Barr and Durham were shown other evidence the Italians had on Mifsud.

Ever since Robert Mueller concluded his probe in March 2019, Barr has worked to blunt its impact—and investigate the investigators behind it. Barr assigned Durham to look into the Mueller probe’s origins..................................................................

Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/barr-went-to-rome-to-hear-a-secret-tape-from-joseph-mifsud-the-professor-who-helped-ignite-the-russia-probe?ref=scroll

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Barr and Trump are pathologically obsessed with Hillary. damn


...............The sources in Rome who confirmed that Barr and Durham came to learn more about Mifsud also told The Daily Beast that they expected Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to meet the same intelligence agencies on his state visit that began Tuesday. "

[GeorgeGist]

1. Rudy's videotape!

[Corgigal]

2. Came back

to work in the federal government to be a gopher.

Congrats, idiot.

[Kid Berwyn]

6. Barr works for a higher authority.

The Police of the Ownership Class, Capitalism’s Invisible Army.

Bill Barr: The “Cover-Up General”

"At the center of the criticism is the chief artic­ulator of Bush's imperial presidency," we reported in 1992, "the man who wrote the legal rationale for the Gulf War, the Panama invasion, and the officially sanctioned kidnapping of foreign nationals abroad"

by FRANK SNEPP
The Village Voice, APRIL 18, 2019

Snip...

For the next two years, as chief of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Coun­sel, Barr played a key role in shaping Rich­ard Thornburgh’s stormy tenure as attorney general. In a job that was essentially politi­cal, he helped maintain the administra­tion’s ideological purity by screening out judicial candidates who weren’t conserva­tive enough. He also drafted two key docu­ments rationalizing the U.S. invasion of Panama and the seizure of General Manuel Noriega.

Snip...

In mid 1990, as Thornburgh’s own prob­lems with Congress deepened, Barr was tapped to run interference, and was named deputy attorney general. The appointment came just in time for him to draft another landmark tract for the administration, the legal pretext for the undeclared war against Iraq. It would have made any Nixonite proud. Explaining it later to Congress, Barr said he believed there was a “gray zone” between a declared offensive war and an emergency defensive action where “there is latitude for the president, if he believes that the vital interests of the United States are threatened by foreign military attack, there is room for him to respond.”

Barr did not make clear how the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait equaled an attack on vital American interests, but to his credit, at the moment of decision itself, he did counsel the president to soften the impact of his unilateral rush to war by seeking a declaration of congressional support. That piece of advice, much akin to Johnson’s leveraging of the Tonkin Gulf resolution, helped to keep the naysayers at bay.

Barr’s service to the administration, how­ever, wasn’t limited simply to such flashes of political savvy. In 1991 he became active in stone-walling the Iraqgate and the BCCI investigations and further gratified conser­vatives by keeping up the tattoo on their favorite hot-button issues. Embracing im­migration policy as his own, he helped craft an exception rule that automatically barred HIV-positive sufferers from entering the country. Civil libertarians charged illegal discrimination and even racism, since many of those excluded were black Hai­tians. Barr assured Congress that the policy was meant only to keep out people who might be thrown back on public welfare.

Flogging another conservative hobby­horse, Barr fought hard as deputy AG to keep federal courts from expanding their right to review state criminal convictions on writs of habeas corpus. As a devout Catholic, he also pandered to the antiabor­tion crowd, even “torquing” the law in Au­gust 1991 to advance their crusade. The challenge came when a federal judge in Wichita issued an order barring anti-abor­tion demonstrators from blocking access to a clinic. The Justice Department inter­vened to try to force a lifting of the ban. Later asked about this by Congress, Barr gave an exquisitely technical rationale, as­serting that though the demonstrators were “lawbreakers . . . treading on other people’s rights,” they “should be dealt with” in state court, not federal court — thus the federal judge’s order was unenforceable.

Continues...

https://www.villagevoice.com/2019/04/18/attorney-general-william-barr-is-the-best-reason-to-vote-for-clinton/

AG Barr is the rock which covers all manner of the vilest treasons.

[Hotler]

9. MOTHERFUCKER! His hands are on everything. Now I'm really pissed......

would we be here now or this deep in tRump shit if we had started impeachment inquiries back in 2007 against Bush. The House voted in favor of 35 articles of impeachment and our leaders let them sit and the words "Impeachment is off the table." was uttered. Why? In my view,tRumps shit is bad but, not as bad as the Bush admin., there were some big scandals back then, BCCI, Iraq, Valarie Plame, lies.

If only we had the fight and will we have right now back then, we might not be dealing with Barr now.

[not fooled]

12. Yeah

it goes back even further than chimpy--tricky dick got off relatively unscathed (other than having to resign), had a secret deal in place when he resigned, etc. Saint Ronnie and bush I skated on Iran-Contra. Thom Hartmann went through the whole sorry saga earlier this week on his show.

No real consequences = the crooks get more and more brazen. Just think, if nixon had been thrown in jail, how much might have been averted.

[Kid Berwyn]

14. He's attempting to erase history: Putin owns Trump.

And Trump has returned Putin on the investment.

W. Poppy. Pruneface. Ford. Nixon. Ironic, given that right wing rah rah noise.

During Watergate, Nixon said: “Fire everyone. Except (GHW) Bush and the Texans. He'll do anything for our side." After (Warren Commission member) Ford’s pardon there was no trial, “Bush and The Texans” walked into our fascist nightmare of a present day reality.

The late Paul Kangas chronicled the story.

[Hotler]

17. No shit. Thank you for sharing that read.

I think I've have read it years ago, it is a good review and an eye opener for those that have not read it. The infection we have right now in our politics goes back a long way. That is way it is important now that justice rains down on this admin with a heavy fist. A clear message needs to be sent.

[bucolic_frolic]

3. Their obsession with the 2016 election is sick

It's an attempt IMO to squelch all opposition forever. America should be very wary.

[amcgrath]

4. It seems rather zealous

- not to mention expensive, for Republican officials working so hard to discredit the Mueller report, which - as any republican will tell you, completely exonerated the president.

[KPN]

7. +1000!

[Yavin4]

5. This is like OJ looking for the real killer. n/t

[KPN]

8. They don't care so much about actual evidence

that might fit their narrative so much as the appearance that there is evidence. Sowing doubt — that’s all this is about. The media knows about this trip and purpose because they wanted the media to know about it. These assholes are as Machiavellian as it gets.

[TomCADem]

10. The DOJ is now just a branch of the Trump Campaign

Who would think that anyone could make Sessions look better by comparison? Barr is all to willing to act as a hack.

[Sancho]

11. I think it's great that Barr is taking an Italian vacation to look for a Russian spy...

..who is probably a few hundred feet deep in the Mediterranean!

Keeps him out of Washington.

[lanlady]

13. Instead of ensuring Jeffrey Epstein stayed alive to face his accusers

this was what Barr was doing - spending time and resources on utter nonsense.

[ck4829]

15. Isn't that guy supposed to be dead? That is what was said when he couldn't appear in a court case

According to a filing in a U.S. federal court in the case Democratic National Committee v. Russian Federation in September 2018, Mifsud was "missing and may be deceased". Mifsud's whereabouts were unknown and he could not be served with the complaint.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/professor-at-center-of-trump-russia-probe-goes-missing

[lagomorph777]

16. That tape would be interesting for the American public - show how dangerous Trump is.