"I have never personally met the then Attorney General of the United States, Bill Barr, during his visits to Italy, neither in the course of formal meetings nor in the course of convivial meetings".
Thus the former premier and now president of M5s, Giuseppe Conte, in a post in which he confirms "that he had correctly and dutifully reported, in his time, all the information in my possession regarding this affair to Copasir".
"After the articles in today's edition of Repubblica, I find myself again forced to repeat what I have already clarified several times in total transparency before the bodies in charge and before the citizens" writes Conte according to which "the fact that after the official meeting of the August 15, 2019, which took place at the headquarters of our Intelligence, in Piazza Dante in Rome, a dinner was held the same evening between the American delegation and the then Director of Dis Vecchione, a circumstance that I was not specifically aware of ".
If, however, the former prime minister points out, "the dinner was held in a well-known restaurant in the historic center of Rome, I imagine it was motivated by institutional courtesy, rather than by the need to have a confidential exchange of information".
For completeness - adds Conte, "
The M5s leader then underlines that Barr, at the time of the events, "was not only Attorney general but also in charge of the FBI's activities concerning national security (the FBI carries out, in fact, civil intelligence activities and, in particular, counterintelligence) and sent his request for information not to me directly, but through our official diplomatic channels, in particular through our ambassador to the United States. "
But "his request did not have as its object a hypothesis of judicial cooperation for which it would have been improper to address it to our Minister of Justice".
Furthermore, "I believe it has never happened in the history of our country that our institutions responded with a preventive refusal to collaborate and even to meet the high representatives of the United States to a request for information from the United States relating to the intelligence plan. . Anyone who hypothesizes such a scenario is in bad faith or simply does not know what they are talking about ".
Finally, "it would have been improper to meet the representatives of the United States by making our archives available or allowing them to indiscriminately acquire information. Precisely for this reason, after a first meeting in which Mr. Barr exposed his requests and was defined the scope of the collaboration, there was a second meeting, with all the top management of our three Agencies, in which the discussion object of the interview took place, without delivery of documents ".