‘Joseph Mifsud a spy? He spoke too much’ says Rome university colleague Vincenzo Scotti

The Maltese professor believed to have instigated the allegation of Russian dirt on the Clinton campaign in the US election of 2016 “spoke too much to be a spy”, a former colleague of the Rome campus that once served as a branch of the University of Malta.

Vincenzo Scotti, an 86-year-old former minister of the interior in the Christian democrat administration of Giulio Andreotti, has disputed conspiracy theories advanced by Donald Trump’s allies that Mifsud was a counter-intelligence spy despatched by the FBI or CIA to derail the US election.

Scotti, a colleague of Mifsud when the Maltese professor worked at Link Campus, has called the allegation “total nonsense”.

“He talked too much to be a spy. Take it from a man who has seen a fair bit of history, who was a minister of the interior, who has worked deep in the institutions, and comes from a the rigorous political school of Christian democracy…” Scotti told Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

“Mifsud is a conservative who has friendships in the Labour Party who, given his experience as chief of staff of former foreign minister, enjoyed a first-class curriculum, had an impressive network of contacts, starting with a personal friendship with Boris Johnson, who has ended up in this story superficially and I believe, because of a certain dose of arrogance,” Scotti said.

Scotti laughed off claims by Trump’s allies that Mifsud was the conduit for Russians on the leaked emails from the Democratic National Congress that were used against Clinton.

“In this university, Italian intelligence executives come to talk about academic issues. The operatives in charge of collecting information or recruiting agents do not come. As for the Russians, we explained it to the Americans four years ago that there was a global campaign of Russian and Chinese disinformation. Go figure.”