U.S. attorney scrutinizes 'false statements' by Mueller prosecutor who targeted Papadopoulos | Just The News

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The U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C. may be starting the process of accountability against special counsel Robert Mueller years after claims of Trump-Russia collusion were debunked.

The U.S. attorney for the nation's capital sent a letter last week to a former member of special counsel Robert Mueller's team, scrutinizing the Mueller prosecutor's role in targeting and convicting former Trump campaign associate George Papadopoulos.

Ed Martin, who has been the interim U.S. Attorney for D.C. since January 20, sent the letter to ex-Mueller prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky, who resigned from the Justice Department following Trump's 2024 victory. Trump nominated Martin for the full-time position in March, while Senate Democrats have been seeking to delay or block his nomination.

"Declassified Federal Bureau of Investigation documents released under federal Freedom of Information laws have raised questions about the integrity and legality of your work as a federal prosecutor in the Robert Mueller special counsel investigation — a probe which failed to prove then-candidate Donald Trump's campaign colluded with Russia and is now known to be falsely predicated," the U.S. attorney told the former Mueller team member in a Monday letter obtained by Just the News and first reported by the New York Sun. Martin also raised questions about Zelinsky's stint a decade ago teaching at a Chinese Communist Party-linked law school in China.

Zelinksy said in late February that "I'm excited to join a group of smart, talented, and fearless lawyers at Zuckerman Spaeder LLP." His law firm bio notes that he "served as Assistant Special Counsel to Robert S. Mueller, III, where he led the Special Counsel Office's investigation and prosecution of Roger Stone and George Papadopoulos."

The controversy surrounding Papadopoulos relates to a conversation he had in 2016 with a mysterious professor named Joseph Mifsud.

Martin noted in his letter to Zelinksy that the August 2018 sentencing memo signed by Zelinsky and his fellow Mueller prosecutors stated that Papadopoulous's "lies undermined investigators' ability to challenge the Professor [Joseph Mifsud] or potentially detain or arrest him while he was still in the United States." Martin added that "you then noted that Mifsud was able to leave the United States and avoid a confrontation with authorities due to Papadopoulos' dishonesty."

The U.S. attorney told the former Mueller prosecutor that "due to your false statements, it appears you sent an innocent man to jail in an attempt to advance the false narrative that the campaign of a serving President had colluded with Russia to win the presidency" and that "it also appears you knew this narrative to be false." Zelinsky was not charged with any crime.

Martin called this the "weaponization of federal government powers" and pointed to Trump's January executive order on "Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government." The U.S. attorney also told the ex-Mueller prosecutor: "I am writing to invite you to voluntarily meet with me and representatives of my office to discuss these discrepancies. We would also like to speak with you about your 2012 service to the Peking University Transnational School of Law, including what Chinese national contacts you made during that period and those you remained in contact with during the Mueller investigation and since."

Zelinsky, a member of Mueller's team who prosecuted the Stone case, submitted written testimony charging that Stone was "being treated differently from any other defendant because of his relationship to the President." But Zelinsky later jumped ship, and announced his resignation from the DOJ on LinkedIn earlier this year.

"On January 10, 2025, I resigned from the Department of Justice after more than a decade," Zelinksy said in a February post on LinkedIn. "I am furious, heartbroken, and disappointed (but sadly not surprised) at what the President and his appointees are doing to DOJ — an attempt to build a government of men, not of laws. For the first time in my professional life I gave an interview, because I think it's important we not allow these abhorrent actions to pass without protest and comment from those of us who can speak publicly."

Zelinsky has now given a series of interviews and made numerousLinkedInposts attacking the Trump administration and the Trump DOJ and FBI. "Foreign bad actors are consistently trying to interfere in our domestic elections," Zelinsky said in February. "Gutting the nonpartisan professionals who protect our elections from foreign influence and attack makes our democracy less safe."
"Stand and be counted," Zelinsky posted on LinkedIn in March. "Help make ours a country of laws, not of men. Right still matters. Justice still matters. The truth still matters."

Zelinsky was sharing a post from the American Bar Association (ABA) which condemned Trump's executive orders related to law firms such as Perkins Coie, which had funded British ex-spy Christopher Steele's discredited dossier through its former lawyer Marc Elias, and related to judges such as Judge James Boasberg, who has stymied Trump's deportation efforts and previously made divisive decisions related to the Crossfire Hurricane fallout.

"We reject efforts to undermine the courts and the profession," the ABA post shared by Zelinksy said. "We will not stay silent in the face of efforts to remake the legal profession into something that rewards those who agree with the government and punishes those who do not. Words and actions matter. And the intimidating words and actions we have heard must end. They are designed to cow our country's judges, our country's courts and our legal profession."

Zelinsky did not respond to a request for comment from Just the News.

Papadopoulos was given the code name Crossfire Typhoon by the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane team investigating false claims of Trump-Russia collusion. He pleaded guilty to a false statements charge in October 2017 and in September 2018 he was sentenced to 14 days in prison.

Papadopoulos told Just the News that "I think the letter [from Martin] is a good first step but we need to scrutinize why special counsel John Durham said that the 'investigation' did not start the way that Crossfire Hurricane investigators and AG Horowitz said it did and why the official predicate was illegal." He also said that "I look forward to seeing where these investigations go and what more information is declassified."

The 2019 Mueller report contended that Papadopoulos told them he had met Mifsud and that Mifsud told him the Russians had "dirt" on Clinton in the form of "thousands of emails." Mueller claimed that Papadopoulos "made false statements in an effort to minimize the extent and importance of his communications with Mifsud." The report contended that "Papadopoulos's false statements in January 2017 impeded the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Most immediately, those statements hindered investigators' ability to effectively question Mifsud when he was interviewed" in February 2017.

The Mueller report also contended that Mifsud lied to them when he "denied that he had advance knowledge that Russia was in possession of emails damaging to candidate Clinton." Mueller said Mifsud "also falsely stated that he had not seen Papadopoulos since the meeting at which Mifsud introduced him to" a woman named Olga Polonskaya. The special counsel also said "Mifsud omitted that he had drafted (or edited) the follow-up message that Polonskaya sent to Papadopoulos following the initial meeting."

The FBI interviewed Mifsud in the lobby of the Omni Shoreham Hotel in the nation's capital on Feb. 10, 2017.

"MIFSUD stated that he had no advance knowledge Russia was in possession of emails from the Democratic National Committee and, therefore, did not make any offers or proffer any information to PAPADOPOULOS," the FBI notes of the interview state. "They spoke about cyber security and hacking as a larger issue. PAPADOPOULOS must have misunderstood their conversation."

Mueller contended that "the false information and omissions in Papadopoulos's January 2017 interview undermined investigators' ability to challenge Mifsud when he made these inaccurate statements." Mifsud was never charged by Mueller for allegedly lying repeatedly to the special counsel investigators. He was allowed to leave the United States and never returned.

Papadopoulos told investigators that Mifsud said in 2016 that Russia possessed some sort of damaging information on Hillary Clinton, a claim he allegedly conveyed to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer.

Zelinsky and the other Mueller prosecutors argued in their August 2018 sentencing memorandum for Papadopoulos that "his lies were material to the investigation," and "his lies to the FBI in January 2017 impeded the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election." Mueller's team claimed that Papadopoulos's lies "substantially hindered" its ability to "effectively question" Mifsud when the FBI located him in Washington. The team also claimed Papadopoulos's lies "undermined" its ability to "challenge" Mifsud or even "detain or arrest him" while he was in the U.S.

Mifsud left the U.S. on Feb. 11, 2017.

During an FBI interview on Feb. 1, 2017, Papadopoulos said he'd Googled Mifsud following the Jan. 27, 2017, FBI interview and "identified many open source internet articles that related Mifsud to both Russia and the Kremlin." Additionally, he told the FBI he "knew Mifsud to be an associate of a Russian discussion club." Papadopoulos said "that Mifsud was … coordinating all things related to Russia at the London Centre of International Law Practice." He told the investigators that "Mifsud recently reached out to Papadopoulos and indicated that he may be traveling to Washington, D.C., in February 2017." Papadopoulos also offered to "potentially meet with Mifsud" when traveling to London three weeks later.

In a Feb. 10, 2017, interview, Papadopoulos said, "Mifsud told Papadopoulos that Clinton had a lot of problems and then made a specific reference to her having problems with her emails." When Papadopoulos asked how Mifsud knew, Mifsud "strangely chuckled" and said, "They told me they have them." Many of these details weren't highlighted in the public offense statement against Papadopoulos in October 2017 or the sentencing recommendation the next year.

Fired FBI agent Peter Strzok incorrectly claimed in his 2020 book, Compromised, that Australian diplomat Alexander Downer was spurred to inform the U.S. government about a May 2016 conversation he had in a London wine bar with Papadopoulos, in which the Trump campaign associate mentioned that Russia might have information on Clinton, after hearing then-candidate Donald Trump say in July 2016, "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails."

Strzok also seemed to make that false claim in March 2017 when briefing Justice Department and FBI officials about the Trump-Russia investigation.

But, as The Washington Examiner pointed out, Australia informed the United States of this conversation on July 26, 2016 — one day before, not after, Trump made the comment about Russia. Strzok admitted in September 2020 he had gotten that detail wrong in his book, though he downplayed it. The alleged mistake was part of a larger pattern.

Handwritten notes labeled as written by Tashina Gauhar, then the associate deputy attorney general, indicate Strzok made the same misleading claim about Trump's remarks prompting the Australian to reach out to the FBI when briefing then-acting Attorney General Dana Boente and others on March 6, 2017.

The "opening electronic communication" for Crossfire Hurricane was authored by Strzok and authorized by FBI official Bill Priestap at the end of July 2016. The investigation didn't interview Papadopoulos until January 2017.

The 2023 Durham report said that "the raw information provided by the Australian government" was included in a May 2016 cable "that documented the diplomats' encounters with Papadopoulos." Durham said that a portion of the cable was quoted directly in the opening communication which launched Crossfire Hurricane: "He [Papadopoulos] also suggested the Trump team had received some kind of suggestion from Russia that it could assist this process with the anonymous release of information during the campaign that would be damaging to Mrs[.] Clinton (and President Obama). It was unclear whether he or the Russians were referring to material acquired publicly of [sic] through other means. It was also unclear how Mr[.] Trump's team reacted to the offer."

Instead of quickly interviewing Papadopoulos in the summer of 2016, the FBI opened investigations into Papadopoulos, Carter Page, retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort as people who may have received information from Russia.

British ex-spy Christopher Steele had been hired by the opposition research firm Fusion GPS to conduct his baseless anti-Trump research dossier, and Fusion GPS in turn had been hired by Clinton's 2016 campaign by now ex-Perkins Coie lawyer Marc Elias.

When Papadopoulos was finally interviewed by the FBI in January 2017, he said Mifsud had told him that the Russians had damaging information on Clinton in April 2016. Despite being told that it was Papadopoulos who had been told about this alleged Clinton information, since-fired FBI special agent Peter Strzok continued to cite the supposed mystery as a reason to continue investigating Flynn.

Papadopoulos spoke to the House in 2018 and, according to Papadopolous, Mifsud told him that the Russians had obtained Hillary Clinton emails, but Papadopolous insisted that he didn't hear anything about them coming from the Democratic National Committee nor being obtained by WikiLeaks.

"He tells me that the Russians have thousands of Hillary Clinton emails," he said. "I never heard the word DNC … I never heard the words DNC, [Clinton campaign chairman John] Podesta, anything like that … My impression when he told me this information at the time was he is validating rumors. Because I didn't feel that I heard something so different, like Democratic National Committee emails, WikiLeaks, I didn't hear anything like that."

Papadopolous said of Mifsud: "He had failed to introduce me to anyone of substance in the Russian government. So he failed to do that, but now all of a sudden he has the keys to the kingdom about a massive potential conspiracy that Russia is involved in."

Mueller refused to explain why he had not also charged Mifsud with false statements when he appeared before the House in July 2019.

Rep. Jim Jordan told Mueller, "FBI interviewed Joseph Mifsud on February 10th, 2017. In that interview, Mr. Mifsud lied. You point this out on page 193, Volume I. … Three times, he lied to the FBI. Yet, you didn't charge him with a crime. Why not?... He [Mifsud] lied three times, you point it out in the report, why didn't you charge him with a crime?"

"I can't get into internal deliberations with regard to who or who would not be charged," Mueller said.

Jordan pointed out that "you charged a lot of other people with making false statements."

"I can't get into the evidentiary filings," Mueller said.

Jordan argued that "Joseph Mifsud is the guy who told Papadopoulos… This is the guy who told Papadopoulous. He's the guy who starts it all. And when the FBI interviews him, he lies three times, and yet you don't charge him with a crime."

Jordan asked, "When the Special Counsel's Office interviewed Mifsud, did he lie to you guys too?"

Mueller said "can't get into that" when asked if the Mueller team interviewed Mifsud, if Mifsud had lied to the Mueller team, and if Mifsud was a member of either Western intelligence or Russian intelligence.

Then-Rep. Devin Nunes, the former ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, told Fox News in February 2020 that the FBI interview notes — known as 302s — showed that Mueller's prosecutors misled the courts about what Papadopoulos told them about Mifsud.

"Remember the whole story that Papadopoulos needed to be really treated badly and sentenced to some time because he really stopped the FBI from being able to find Joseph Mifsud?" Nunes asked Fox News host Laura Ingraham. He added saying "Well, it ends up that's not true. That's not what the 302s say. The 302s actually say that Papadopoulos was actually trying to help the FBI, and they're the ones that said that Mifsud was going to be in the United States."

Nunes added that "the lawyers that wrote that to the court, that recommendation to the court, they need to be held accountable," and "we're scrubbing through all of these 302s, and we will be making some type of criminal referral."

Nunes pointed to a February 2020 article by investigative journalist Lee Smith for Just the News, which stated the FBI's memos "directly conflict" with the Mueller team's court filings and showed Papadopoulos "had in fact supplied information that would have enabled investigators to challenge or potentially detain or arrest Mifsud while he was in the United States."

Papadopoulos tweeted at the time that "Mueller and his hacks … lied."

Nunes said at CPAC in February 2020 that "Mifsud supposedly starts this thing," and yet the FBI let him leave the country after questioning him in D.C. in February 2017. Mifsud never returned to the U.S. and has disappeared from public view.

"It wouldn't be hard to track him down," Nunes said. "And, if it's the end of democracy, as Democrats and the fake news have said, then, hell, they should've sent every drone in our military after Mifsud."

Fired FBI Director James Comey called Mifsud a "Russian agent" in a 2019 Washington Post opinion piece. He provided no evidence of this, and Mueller did not call Mifsud an agent of Russia but rather stated that Mifsud had "connections to Russia." He also noted that Mifsud "traveled to Moscow in April 2016" and "met with high-level Russian government officials" before telling Papadopoulos in London about alleged Clinton information.

The Senate Intelligence Committee's 2020 report said Mifsud was "a Maltese academic with longstanding Russia ties" who "exhibited behavior consistent with intelligence tradecraft" and had "significant ties to Russian government and business circles."

Nunes previously said in 2019 that Mifsud likely has links to Western intelligence and accused Mueller's team of deciding to "cherry-pick" information from news reports. DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz didn't find evidence that Mifsud was an FBI asset.

Just the News revealed on April 10 that declassified documents show that Stefan Halper, a key FBI informant in the widely-debunked Russia collusion case, was paid nearly $1.2 million over three decades and was motivated in part by "monetary compensation" — and that he continued snitching for the bureau even after agents concluded he told them an inaccurate story about future Trump National Security Advisor Mike Flynn.

Halper, a Cambridge professor who was working with the FBI as an informant, and Azra Turk, a woman posing as Halper's assistant and using an alias, met with Papadopoulos in 2016 during the presidential campaign.

An FBI document from August 2016 shows Halper said he'd be willing to help the FBI with targeting Papadopoulos but, in a newly unredacted sentence, said that he wanted to meet with Papadopoulos first because, without knowing Papadopoulos, he worried Papadopoulos could be "thrown to the wolves" at his university.

"The main goal of the operation is to have CD [CROSSFIRE DRAGON / Carter Page] admit that he has direct knowledge of and is either helping coordinate or assisting the RF [Russian Federation] conduct an active measure campaign with the 'Trump Team,'" stated an Aug. 24, 2016 report detailing the FBI's interactions with Halper that week.

If the Page operation failed, the FBI "team would then change its posture and move forward with an operation against CROSSFIRE TYPHOON," the memos stated.

Halper worked as an FBI informant in 2016 and recorded discussions with at least three Trump 2016 campaign members: Papadopoulos, Trump campaign associate Carter Page, and Trump campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis. The potentially exculpatory collusion denials made to him by Trump associates, including Papadopoulos, were concealed from the FISA Court.

Durham's 2023 report stated: "In his conversation with CHS-1, Papadopoulos clearly said that such assistance from the Russians would be illegal. This was arguably the most significant information the FBI had gathered after approximately six weeks of investigative effort to evaluate the information it had received from Australia. Yet the FBI chose to discount the information and assessed it to mean the opposite of what was explicitly said."

Durham added that "as with the statements Papadopoulos made in his monitored conversations with CHS-1, none of Papadopoulos's exculpatory statements to CHS-2 regarding his lack of knowledge of assistance from the Russians to the Trump campaign were included in the succeeding Page FISA renewal applications."

Durham told Congress in June 2023 that he went to Italy with then-Attorney General William Barr in 2019 to attempt to gather information about Mifsud. Republicans were unhappy with Durham's inability to provide answers about Mifsud.

Rep. Tom Massie and former Rep. Matt Gaetz both pressed Durham on his failure to interview Mifsud. Massie contended in reference to Mifsud that "this all seems to have started with one person, but I don't see his name in your report. I see it in Mueller's report 89 times."

"Who did Mr. Papadopoulos meet with that gave him this supposed Russian information," Massie asked Durham.

"When Mr. Papadopoulos was interviewed by the FBI, he had identified Joseph Mifsud as the person who had provided him that information," Durham said. "We attempted to interview him. We pursued every lead that we had. We talked to a lawyer that he had in Europe. But we never were able to actually make contact with him."

Massie asked Durham whether Mifsud was "a Western source" or "associated with Western intelligence." Durham had no clear answer. "It's hard to say who Mr. Mifsud is associated with," Durham replied, saying Mifsud had been "tied up" with Link University in Rome and had some ties to the Italian government.

"Hard to say who Mifsud is?" Gaetz exclaimed. "He's the guy who started the whole thing. We've known it for years."

Gaetz played video of Mueller's testimony in the summer of 2019, in which Mueller repeatedly claimed that "I can't get into that" when asked about Mifsud. He pressed Durham on whether he tried to find out who Mifsud truly was.

"Who put Mifsud in play?" Gaetz said.

"I do not know that. I can't give you the answer to that," Durham said.

Durham said, "You'd have to find Mr. Mifsud before you could serve a grand jury subpoena on him" when asked why he didn't subpoena him. Durham also admitted that "we don't know" whether Mifsud was even alive or dead when asked by Massie.

"I'm not going to be disclosing the names of FBI personnel," Durham also said when asked by Gaetz what Azra Turk's real name was.

"Terror is facing the complete unknown and having all your assumptions turned upside down," Papadopoulos wrote in his 2019 book Deep State Target. "It's hearing prosecutors say you are going to face twenty five years in prison. It's being charged with lying to FBI investigators and having no idea what you lied about. It's having no one believe you — even when you are telling the absolute truth."

U.S. Attorney Martin's letter to Mueller prosecutor Zelinsky also raised questions about the former Mueller prosecutor's prior time teaching at a CCP-linked university and about whether he had stayed in touch with any Chinese contacts he had met there while on the Mueller team.

Zelinsky's LinkedIn page says he was an "adjunct professor" at the Peking University of Transnational Law from October to December 2012, and his time there was also included in biographies submitted to the House, in his description at his alma mater Johns Hopkins, and in his author page at the Huffington Post. His new law firm biography doesn't mention it.

On the Chinese law school's website, the top three listed attendees for the school's 2008 dedication ceremony were: then-Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy; Zou Yu, a CCPofficial and former Minister of Justice of People's Republic of China; and Tung Chee Hwa, the Vice Chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the former Chief Executive of Hong Kong.

The CPPCC describes itself as "an organization of the patriotic United Front of the Chinese people." Chinese leader Xi Jinping has described the CCP's United Front Work Department — China's foreign influence arm — as a "magic weapon."

Tung Chee Hwa also ran the China-U.S. Exchange Foundation (CUSEF). The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission in 2018 detailed "the extent of CUSEF's ties to the Chinese government and its involvement in influence operations."

Biden's CIA director, William Burns, joined the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and was asked about that organization's relationship with the CUSEF.

He told the Senate he ended because "we were increasingly worried about the expansion of Chinese influence operations."
Philip McConnaughay, the former dean of the University of Pennsylvania's Dickinson School of Law and the current dean of the Peking University of Transnational Law, admitted in an article on "The Evolving Mission of Peking University's School of Transnational Law" that the CCP had substantial influence over the school and that "Chinese universities have always been controlled by the state."

"Peking University, like all Chinese universities, to my knowledge, has an academic administrative structure similar to the administration of U.S. research universities, with a president, executive vice president/provost, various central university officers, and deans of each constituent college and school—but it also has a parallel administrative structure staffed entirely by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials, with a Party committee led by a Party Secretary at the helm, and with a Party Secretary of each constituent campus, college, school, and discipline," McConnaughay wrote in 2022. "The Party administrative apparatus is superior in rank and authority to the academic administrative apparatus."