Italian government totters as Conte, Renzi divide deepens https://t.co/wNFXsuoHrF pic.twitter.com/zqsfOjiKbr
— Reuters (@Reuters) January 3, 2021
Signs are beginning to emerge of involvement by Italy in not one, but both of the defining scandals of Donald Trump’s presidency: SpyGate and the 2020 election.
In recent articles we have detailed reports that the vote manipulation operation took place not in Frankfurt, Germany, but in Rome, Italy. According to those reports, operatives from several global intelligence agencies (including CIA) manipulated votes in the 2020 election out of U.S. Embassy Rome.
Also not reported on extensively in U.S. media, however, is that SpyGate may have originated in Italy as well.
The alleged genesis of that scandal is a meeting between Joseph Mifsud, a professor at Link University in Rome, and George Papadopoulos in early 2016 at the height of that year’s presidential election.
Papadopoulos was a young fellow at the London Centre of International Law Practice at the time and a foreign advisor to the Trump campaign.
Mifsud would tell Papadopoulos that the Russians had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of emails. That simple comment apparently helped start the Russia investigation that occupied a significant portion of Trump’s first term and would ultimately lead to impeachment proceedings in Congress.
Link University is a private institution based in Rome that is reportedly connected to the worldwide intelligence community. Intelligence operatives teach classes there and secret service directors are frequent speakers.
Mifsud disappeared from public view in late 2017, a day after documents in the investigation bearing his name were made public. Italian media has since been reported he lived in an apartment in Rome until May 2018 after he went underground.
In June 2018 a new populist government appointed Giuseppe Conte as prime minister. Conte seemed to be more pro-Trump than his immediate predecessors. A few weeks later Conte abruptly asked the Italian Foreign Intelligence Director, Alberto Manenti, to resign.
There is now a power struggle in Italy where Matteo Renzi is attempting to displace Conte as prime minister, a position which in Italy gives him significant authority and control over the country’s intelligence apparatus.
Renzi was prime minister from 2014-2016 when the SpyGate saga began.