When the FBI was snooping on Carter Page, it likely picked up at least one phone call about Russia between the former Trump campaign adviser and Steve Bannon.
Page was the subject of controversial warrants issued by a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 2016, in part based on an unsubstantiated opposition-research ‘dossier’ about Donald Trump that was funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic Party.
The FBI was monitoring Page’s communications at the time he says he spoke with Bannon, who was just days away from becoming President Donald Trump’s chief White House strategist.
Page described the call to Congress in November. A memo about the surveillance warrants, released publicly last week by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, established that he was under surveillance at the time.
Carter Page, an unpaid foreign policy adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign, was being surveilled by the FBI when he had at least one phone call with Steve Bannon
Bannon (pictured) spoke with Page about a thinly sourced opposition-research ‘dossier’ on Donald Trump that Buzzfeed had published days earlier – ironically the same dossier that formed part of the basis for the surveillance warrant the FBI was using to spy on Page
‘If Page was using one of his standard phones, it was probably picked up,’ former Justice Department attorney Elizabeth Goitein told Politico.
Page told the Intelligence Committee three months ago that in the days leading up to Trump’s January 2017 inauguration, Bannon called him to ask him to cancel a planned television appearance on MSNBC.
At the time, Page was on the outs with Trumpworld, having been publicly identified as the subject of an investigation related to his Moscow ties.
Page told the congressional panel that he had brought up Buzzfeed’s publication days earlier of what would come to be known as the ‘dirty dossier,’ which alleged that the Kremlin was holding compromising information about Trump cavorting with prostitutes.
Page said the call was ‘brief,’ but hasn’t disclosed any additional specifics.
Bannon is expected to sit with special counsel Robert Mueller in the coming weeks for a grilling about what he knows of links between Russia and the Trump presidential campaign.
The onetime Breitbart News executive chairman served as the campaign’s CEO for its final three months.
Page insists he was a businessman, not a Russian agent, when he made trips to the country earlier in 2016. The anti-Trump dossier portrayed him as a piece of connective tissue between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.
He told Politico on Thursday that he may have had other conversations with Trump aides while the FBI was surveilling him.
‘My relationship with the team was essentially discontinued, for all intents and purposes’ in September 2016, he said, noting that the FBI started monitoring his calls a month later.
Page’s Moscow visit was a scholarly trip during which he says he made it clear he was not there representing then-presidential candidate Trump.
But report he provided to the campaign afterward with his insights and an offer to set up a trip to Russia for Trump has made him a person of interest in investigations into alleged collusion.