ROME (Reuters) - Italy's prime minister has allowed meetings between a senior US official and Italian intelligence as part of President Donald Trump's efforts to undermine the credibility of special prosecutor Robert Mueller's investigation into his ties with Russia, Italian media reported Wednesday.
Giuseppe Conte agreed to two meetings between US Attorney General Bill Barr and Italian intelligence chief Gen. Gennaro Vecchione, according to Corriere della Sera, Italy's largest newspaper.
Barr has been in contact with Australian officials and with Australian, British and Italian intelligence to gather elements to help undermine Muller's credibility, The New York Times reported Saturday.
The Muller report explains Russia's efforts to reverse the 2016 election results for Donald Trump, but investigators have found no evidence of complicity between Moscow and the Republican candidate's surroundings.
Italian media confirmed that Barr arrived in Rome in August to gather elements related to the Muller investigation, and returned to last Friday to meet with General Vecchione, before the arrival of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday in Rome.
The US president, a candidate for the 2020 presidential election, considers Mueller's investigation a conspiracy against him and asked the Justice Department to launch a counter-investigation.
Provide information
Italian media said Barr had asked Italian intelligence to provide as much information as possible about Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese university professor who teaches in Rome, and the Americans suspect he is a spy for Italians or Britons.
Mevsud pledged to Trump's former adviser George Papadopoulos to provide him with information that harms Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election campaign.
Mifsud worked at Link Campus University in Rome until 2017, when Papadopoulos was jailed for lying to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Papadopoulos asserts that Mifsud is part of a group of "spies" used to rally Trump, a position the White House is increasingly supporting.
Before he disappeared, Mifsud lived in the apartment of an association affiliated with Link Campos until May 2018, according to Corriere della Sera.
The university is believed to have links to intelligence and the Five Star Movement, the dominant party in the ruling majority and close to Conte, according to Italian media.
The newspaper "La Repubblica" said that Bar "warned" General Vecchione that the links between the University "Link" and the five-star movement, whose president Luigi de Mayo, Foreign Ministry, may damage the bilateral relations.