Carter Page’s defense for that 2013 letter where he said he was an informal adviser to the Kremlin? Page: “There was a lot of people advising” the Kremlin. (via ABC) pic.twitter.com/l26iUyrkfx
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) February 6, 2018
Carter Page, the former adviser for President Donald Trump‘s campaign who was notoriously the subject of FBI surveillance, appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America on Tuesday to discuss the GOP’s memo describing how the FBI went about getting a FISA warrant targeting him.
Page insisted, as the memo says, that the FISA warrant relied on a controversial and unverified dossier funded by Democrats and put together by Christopher Steele. He has long maintained that the dossier contains false material, and that there was no good reason for him to have been under surveillance.
Host George Stephanopulos pointed out a couple of details from Page’s past that would indicate otherwise.
“You actually had been on the FBI’s radar for working with Russia for several years. You were the target of a Russian recruitment effort back in 2013, the FBI interviewed you about that, correct?”
Page acknowledged, “I was a witness for a case they were doing, so I was supporting the FBI in that case.”
Stephanopoulos then noted that Page had given documents to someone the FBI later charged with espionage. Page said that was “spin,” because, in reality he was teaching a course at NYU and the documents he had turned over were materials that he gave to his students.
Of course, that wasn’t Page’s only connection to Russia. Stephanopoulos confronted Page with his own claim to have served as an adviser to the Russian government.
“These are your words, ‘I served as an informal adviser to the staff of the Kremlin.'”
Page said he was one of many people brought in from around the world for the G-20 Summit.
“We were part of an informal group,” Page said, adding that they had met several times all over the globe.
“But you could understand how that could raise questions and could lead to probable cause,” Stephanopoulos said. On the one hand, at one point you say you were an adviser to the Kremlin, then you’re an adviser to Donald Trump.”
Page still insisted that the only supposed probable cause stemmed from the “dodgy dossier,” despite Democrats claiming otherwise.
The New York Times, meanwhile has requested that the government turn over underlying documents that could show exactly what the warrant was based on. When asked what he thinks those documents would show, Page said, “I have no idea.”
