Carter Page, the unpaid foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign at the apex of a government surveillance scandal, says the allegations of collusion with Russia that have been levied at him are misguided.
Page told Good Morning America that documents he provided to a Russian charged with espionage in 2013 were the very same papers he passed out to students in a college course he was teaching, and there was nothing nefarious about the exchange.
‘It sounds a lot worse than reality, but that’s reality,’ Page said.
His boast that he was an ‘informal adviser’ to the Kremlin that same year is also being misconstrued, Page said – he was assisting in preparations for the G20.
Page revealed in the Tuesday interview that he’s never even spoken to Donald Trump, even though he is routinely identified as an associate of the president’s because he worked on the Republican’s campaign.
Carter Page, the unpaid foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign at the apex of a government surveillance scandal, says the allegations of collusion with Russia that have been levied at him are misguided
A memo put together entirely by Republican lawmakers that was released Friday names Page as the subject of FBI surveillance in 2016.
Republicans claim the FBI relied on an unverified dossier of opposition research against Trump when it applied for the FISA surveillance warrant to spy on Page.
The dossier, compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, was funded by the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Page had been on the FBI’s radar since 2013, however, when he was targeted by two Russian spies, Viktor Podobnyy and Igor Sporyshev.
After Page gave Podobnyy, who he’d met at an symposium in New York, documents about the United States’ energy enterprise, the FBI’s interest was piqued. The feds interviewed Page in June of 2013.