At the time, Papadopoulos, a young energy consultant from Chicago, was working for a startup think tank called the London Center for International Law Practice and had just been drafted to be an unpaid foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign.
On the day after he agreed to join the campaign, Papadopoulos said his boss at the London think tank offered to introduce him to “a very important person” who would be “very useful” in his new position.
This VIP, Papadopoulos wrote in his book “Deep State Target,” was [Josef] Mifsud.
Papadopoulos said he was told by Nagi Idris, the director of the London Center for International Law Practice, that a London attorney affiliated with the think tank named Arvinder Sambei would be setting up a meeting for Papadopoulos and Mifsud at an upcoming conference to be held at Link Campus University in Rome, a private university that was formerly affiliated with the University of Malta.
Sambei is a former government prosecutor in the United Kingdom who had for a time served as a liaison with the U.S. Justice Department on American extradition requests.
Trump allies have seized on her connection to the think tank where Papadopoulos worked as evidence that Mifsud was working with the British government.
The article also notes that Mifsud, who has been affiliated with various think tanks, connected Papadopoulos to a Russian think tank director with ties to the Russian Foreign Ministry and promised to help set up a meeting with the Russian ambassador.
The article also mentions another think tank, noting that CIA's Sherman Kent School for Intelligence Analysis organized a conference with the Gino Germani Institute, an Italian social sciences and strategic studies think tank which was affiliated at the time with Link Campus University.
Here is a previous Think Tank Watch piece about Papadopoulos's connection to the Hudson Institute.