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A lawyer claiming to be closely associated with missing Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud says the academic wants to testify before the United States Senate to answer for his now almost legendary role in the last US election.

The election saw Donald Trump propelled to the US presidency, helped in no small part by Mifsud’s role in the Russiagate Hillary Clinton email scandal.

A lawyer who says he is closely associated with Mifsud has told BuzzFeed News that, “We are working towards his appearance” before the US Senate.

Mifsud disappeared over a year ago after he was identified as the unnamed professor alleged by FBI investigators in court documents unsealed in October 2017 to have told Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos that the Russians had “dirt” on Clinton in the form of thousands of emails.

The information came months before the Democrats were even aware that their computer systems had been hacked.

In an email to BuzzFeed News sent on Monday, Stephan Roh, a 51-year-old Swiss lawyer who has a history with Mifsud, wrote, “Prof Mifsud is to testify in front of the US Senate — we are working towards his appearance.”

Mifsud has not been seen in public since November of last year. His former girlfriend in Ukraine says he disappeared, prosecutors in Italy investigating a decade-old case pertaining to him having defrauded a Sicilian where he once taught have not been able to locate him, and American investigators have complained they were unable to interrogate the professor thoroughly when he was last in the US in February 2017.

Democratic National Committee lawyers even suggested he may be dead.

Asked by BuzzFeed News if a date for the testimony had been set, whether Mifsud would be travelling to the US in person to testify, and if any talks with Senate officials to schedule a testimony had already taken place, Roh replied, “We will not comment or answer further questions of journalists until the Senate hearing takes place — unless necessary and in the interest of Prof. Mifsud.”

Roh also declined to discuss what Mifsud would say if he does testify.

Mifsud will be served ‘if and when he is found alive’

Last September the US Democratic National Committee – which is suing Russia, the Donald Trump election campaign and WikiLeaks for interfering in the 2016 election –suggested in court filings that the elusive Maltese professor at the centre of the campaign meddling investigation may actually be dead.

The DNC said in a court filing at the time that all the defendants in the case have been served with the complaint, “with the exception of Mifsud (who is missing and may be deceased).”

The filing did not offer any explanation as to why the Committee thinks the Russia-linked Maltese professor may not be alive, but noted that it “continues to monitor news sources for any signs of Mifsud’s whereabouts and will attempt service on Mifsud if and when he is found alive”.

The lawyers did not elaborate further in the court filing as to why they think Mifsud may be dead.

A hearing on the DNC lawsuit is scheduled for 13 September in the Manhattan federal court.

The suggestion that Mifsud may be dead was made on the very same day that Trump’s former foreign-policy adviser George Papadopoulos was sentenced to two weeks in jail for lying to investigators about his contacts with Mifsud, who has been suspected of peddling dirt from Russian officials about Hillary Clinton.

In a sentencing memo filed on Friday by Special Counsel Robert