Italy’s Premier May Brief Parliament on Barr’s Secret Meetings
Italy’s Premier May Brief Parliament on Barr’s Secret Meetings
(Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte may address a parliamentary panel on secret meetings between U.S. Attorney General William Barr and Italian intelligence heads, reportedly part of a U.S. investigation into the scandal involving Donald Trump’s possible ties to Russia.
Conte is not concerned and sees no anomaly in the behavior of Italian secret service chiefs, Conte’s office said. The premier would speak to the Rome parliamentary panel on intelligence services, which has members from the lower house and the Senate, before speaking publicly about the meetings, his office said Thursday.
Conte authorized two secret meetings between Barr and heads of the intelligence agencies in Rome, newspaper Corriere della Sera reported earlier this week.
The meetings focused on the origins of the Russia scandal and the fate of Joseph Mifsud, a Rome-based professor involved in the case, the newspaper said. A Justice Department official on Tuesday said that Barr is reviewing action taken by U.S. intelligence agencies in 2016 and has met with officials from Italy and Australia.
Corriere said Conte gave Barr the green light to meet with Gennaro Vecchione, head of Italy’s Department of Information Security, during a visit in August. The department, which is under the premier’s authority, oversees the internal and external intelligence services.
Barr, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani have all been drawn into a U.S. House impeachment inquiry after details of the administration’s foreign contacts emerged. Pompeo has been in Rome this week and met Conte as well as Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio.
To contact the reporter on this story: John Follain in Rome at jfollain2@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Steve Geimann
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