Joseph Mifsud, named in documents unsealed by the Mueller investigation this week, has been portrayed as a seasoned professional in international affairs and diplomacy with a string of connections to Russia. He has denied wrongdoing.

Claire McCracken for BuzzFeed News

LONDON — Joseph Mifsud has been described as many things this week: an enigma, a mysterious professor, and an unlikely focus of attention. The 57-year-old Maltese national has been scrutinized since he was unmasked as the unnamed academic who, according to court filings, told George Papadopoulos, a former campaign adviser to Donald Trump, that Russia had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, in a plea deal unsealed this week. Mifsud acknowledged, in an interview with Italian newspaper la Repubblica published Wednesday, that he was the unnamed "overseas professor" cited in the court documents and said he met Papadopoulos "three or four times." But he told the newspaper that he denies any wrongdoing and says he knows nothing about emails containing "dirt" on Clinton and did not initiate contact with the Trump campaign on behalf of Moscow. "This is nonsense," Mifsud told la Repubblica. "Friendship is friendship, but Papadopoulos doesn't tell the truth. The only thing I did was to facilitate contacts between official and unofficial sources to resolve a crisis. It is usual business everywhere," he said. "I put think tanks in contact, groups of experts with other groups of experts. I have already talked about it with the FBI, when the State Department invited me to a conference on Capitol Hill," he said. It was not immediately clear when, and if, the FBI interviewed Mifsud. BuzzFeed News has spoken to 17 people, including past and present officials and diplomats as well as academics and acquaintances who knew Mifsud. They paint the picture of a man with a pattern of contradictions and boastfulness, as well as a string of connections to Russia. BuzzFeed News made several attempts to contact Mifsud — by repeated phone calls and emails — but he did not respond to our requests for comment.

Link Campus University Joseph Mifsud (left) during a program at Link Campus University, in Rome.

Mifsud is currently working at two universities — University of Stirling, in Scotland, and Link Campus University, in Rome.

At the University of Stirling, he is a full-time professorial teaching fellow in the Politics Department, a position he has held since May of this year. But he has been connected to the school for three years — a 2016 biography on the university's website says he served from 2009 to 2012 as the president of the Comité du Risque, established by the Élysée Palace, the office of the French president. But a spokesperson at the French Embassy in London told BuzzFeed News, reported here for the first time, that the position does not exist. The French president's office had "combed through their archives and explained they had no trace of a Joseph Mifsud or the existence of a 'Comité du Risque', for that matter!" the official said in an email. The discrepancies don't stop there. Mifsud told the Washington Post in August that he had "absolutely no contact" with the Russian government. "I am an academic, I do not even speak Russian," he said. In the interview with la Repubblica, he repeated that he didn't know anyone in the Russian government. But moments later in the same interview, he said that he had spoken to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov around the time that José Manuel Barroso left the European Commission in 2014. He did not say where or under what circumstances the conversation happened — and BuzzFeed News could not independently verify whether Lavrov and Mifsud had ever met.

Russian Embassy in the UK / Via rusemb.org.uk Mifsud (right) with Russian ambassador Alexander Yakovenko in London.

Mifsud has met with other Russian officials. In 2014, he met Russia's ambassador to the UK, Alexander Yakovenko. A photo caption on the embassy's website reads: "[The] Professor presented his views on the results of the Global University Summit which he attended (Moscow, 24-25 April). They also discussed different issues of the Russian-British cooperation in the sphere of international relations, diplomacy, science and education." According to emails obtained by Scotland-based STV News, Stirling University's management boasted about Mifsud's links to the Kremlin. Mifsud told la Repubblica he doesn't speak Russian. But three years ago, he told a reporter at the Washington Diplomat that he speaks nine languages — including Russian. Mifsud did not respond to requests for comment on whether he speaks the language or not. The reporter who interviewed Mifsud three years ago told BuzzFeed News: "