I admire Maria Bartiromo more than any other TV journalist, but she or Trey Gowdy threw out that June, 2016 date without sourcing it. PapaD met with Alexander Downer on May 6, 2016 ... the Australian government on July 26 advised American authorities of the encounter between Downer and Papadopoulos, which spurred the FBI into launching the Crossfire Hurricane investigation on July 31. The FBI, to the best of my knowledge, has dated the Russia counterintel investigation to this July date. If we discount all the setting up of PapaD, Carter Page, and probably General Flynn, yes the investigation started in July, 2016, following Donald Trump gaining the Repub nomination and prior to Donald Trump winning the November election.
What anyone questioning Joseph Mifsud about the details of his involvement would uncover is the prior counterintel operation and, by implication, Five Eyes {FVEY}. I still wonder what Joe Pientka and Michael Gaeta can contribute to our knowledge since they have both also disappeared since those curious days.
Apparently Gaeta, FBI Rome, was involved with Christopher Steele in setting up the Dossier in the Spring of 2016. Pientka was only reported to have accompanied Peter Strzok to interview Michael Flynn in the early 2017 Trump Admin. First reported to have determined that Flynn did not lie, the incident 302's were at first misplaced, then found some months later and after that reported to have been reversed - Strzok's and Pientka's 302's confused. This appears to be a fertile field for investigation.
#931 IMHO Pientka filed Whistleblower status and came clean to the IG. He knew that it would soon become common knowledge what he had done. So part of the agreement was that they got him out of dodge. He knew his days were numbered staying in the criminal enterprise known formally as the Eff Bee Eye.
So he ran off to S.F. until he was dug up. Now he is probably someplace like the French Rivera.