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![\"Carter](\"http:\/\/arts-attic.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/Carter-Page-300x200.jpg\")
<\/a>Carter Page, a former foreign policy adviser for presidential candidate Donald Trump\u2019s campaign, speaks at a news conference in Moscow in December 2016. (Pavel Golovkin\/AP)<\/p><\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Carter Page has said he was \u201cinterested in business\u201d and \u201cpossible research opportunities\u201d when he traveled to Moscow and London in December 2016 to meet with Russian contacts.<\/p>\n At the time, he was under FBI surveillance. And federal law enforcement officials were apparently concerned enough about the former Trump campaign adviser\u2019s activities that they repeatedly sought to extend their monitoring of Page, according to a Republican House memo released Friday.<\/p>\n The controversial GOP memo alleges that the warrant the FBI obtained in October 2016 to track Page relied on unvetted information provided by a former British spy working for the Democrats.<\/p>\n While Republicans presented the memo as evidence that the investigation was tainted, the document indicates that law enforcement officials had sufficient worries about the energy consultant that they felt it was necessary to continue to monitor him.<\/p>\n Page had been on the radar of the FBI at least as far back as 2013, when a bureau wiretap caught suspected Russian spies discussing their attempts to recruit him. Even after being interviewed by the investigators in that case, Page continued to have extensive contacts with Russians, including trips to Moscow in July and December 2016.<\/p>\n It is not clear what the FBI learned about Page\u2019s late-2016 travel abroad, which occurred just weeks after Trump\u2019s election. But five senior Justice Department and FBI officials signed off on three requests for extensions of the foreign intelligence surveillance warrant for Page; all the requests were approved by a federal judge, according to the Republican memo.<\/p>\n ADVERTISING<\/p>\n Page released a statement Friday praising GOP lawmakers for revealing an \u201cunprecedented abuse of process\u201d in their document.<\/p>\n To obtain a warrant to monitor a U.S. citizen under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Justice Department must convince a judge that there is probable cause to suspect that the person is an agent of a foreign power and is engaged in criminal conduct. Such warrants expire after 90 days.<\/p>\n To receive an extension, the department\u2019s attorneys generally produce new evidence showing the judge that the monitoring has been producing information that advances the investigation.<\/p>\n Late last year, Page provided vague and at times contradictory answers about the December 2016 trip to Russia under intense questioning from the House Intelligence Committee.<\/p>\n Page also challenged allegations that during his trip to Moscow in July 2016, he had met with Igor Sechin, an ally of Russian President Vladi\u00admir Putin\u2019s and chief of the energy company Rosneft, and also met with a top Russian government official.<\/p>\n The alleged encounters were detailed in reports that former British spy Christopher Steele compiled for a firm working for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton\u2019s campaign.<\/p>\n Page has long denied that he met the men, labeling Steele\u2019s work a \u201cdodgy dossier\u201d that he says has resulted in his persecution by the Department of Justice and the U.S. media.<\/p>\n Trump first named the energy consultant as a foreign policy adviser in March 2016 amid a hasty effort by his campaign to beef up its national security credentials.<\/p>\n [\u2018Anyone .?.?. with a pulse\u2019: How a Russia-friendly adviser found his way into the Trump campaign]<\/p>\n FBI and congressional investigators have scrutinized Page\u2019s role with the campaign and his contacts with Russians during that period as part of the probes into Russia\u2019s meddling in the 2016 election.<\/p>\n But law enforcement interest in Page dates to at least 2013, when the FBI caught two accused Russian spies on a wiretap discussing their attempts to recruit Page and use him to learn inside information about the U.S. energy industry.<\/p>\n Page has acknowledged communicating with one of the men \u2014 who the FBI later said was a Russian intelligence officer posing as a diplomat \u2014 including providing him documents about the energy business.<\/p>\n In a transcript submitted in court documents in 2015 after three New York-based Russians were charged with working as foreign agents, the two men discussed Page\u2019s frequent travel to Moscow and his apparent eagerness to help them. They suggested that they were duping the American.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s obvious he wants to earn a lot of money,\u201d Victor Podobnyy \u2014 who, acting as an attache in Russia\u2019s mission to the United Nations \u2014 told his colleague, according to the transcript.<\/p>\n \u201cI think he is an idiot,\u201d added Podobnyy, who was charged but not prosecuted because he was no longer living in the United States.<\/p>\n Page has said he was interviewed voluntarily by the FBI in the case in June 2013 and that he gave Podobnyy only nonsensitive information \u2014 similar to course materials from a class he was teaching at the time at New York University. He was not charged with a crime.<\/p>\n In late 2015, less than a year after the Russian spy case was filed in court, Page approached Ed Cox, the chairman of the Republican Party for New York state and asked to be connected with Trump\u2019s campaign, according to Page\u2019s testimony to the House Intelligence Committee.<\/p>\n He knew Cox through New York social circles and said he had long admired Trump and wanted to work with his campaign, in part because he was impressed with Trump\u2019s \u201cnew approaches\u201d to the U.S.-Russia relationship, Page told the committee.<\/p>\n Cox introduced Page to Corey Lewandowski, at the time Trump\u2019s campaign manager, who in turn introduced him to the campaign\u2019s national chairman, Sam Clovis.<\/p>\n It was Clovis who included Page on a list of campaign advisers read aloud by Trump during a meeting with The Washington Post editorial board in March 2016, as The Post previously reported.<\/p>\n The list was produced at a time when Trump was rising in the polls and was under pressure to show he had experienced foreign policy hands advising his effort, which was opposed by many establishment national security experts.<\/p>\n People familiar with the campaign\u2019s vetting of Page have told The Post that it consisted of a quick Google search, which revealed only that he offered a good r\u00e9sum\u00e9: He was a graduate of the Naval Academy, head of his own energy investment firm and held graduate degrees from NYU and the University of London.<\/p>\n Page quickly drew scrutiny from foreign policy experts concerned about Trump\u2019s friendly stance toward Putin, a position that was out of step with the rest of the Republican Party.<\/p>\n Days after he was named to the campaign, Page gave an interview to Bloomberg News in which he predicted that a Trump victory would be financially useful for Russian associates who had been hurt by U.S. sanctions. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of excitement in terms of the possibilities for creating a better situation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Then, in July, he traveled to Russia, where he delivered a speech at Moscow\u2019s New Economic School, where he publicly criticized U.S. foreign policy.<\/p>\n It was on this trip, Steele alleged, that Page met with top Russian officials, indicating that Sechin had offered Page and other Trump associates a hefty brokerage fee from the impending sale of Rosneft if they could ensure U.S. sanctions were lifted by a Trump administration.<\/p>\n Page told the House committee that he did not meet with Rosneft chief Sechin on that trip.<\/p>\n However, he said, he did briefly greet Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich after the speech and also said he visited a Moscow bar and watched a soccer match with Andrey Baranov, a top Rosneft executive.<\/p>\n Asked whether the two men had discussed the sale of Rosneft while watching soccer, Page responded \u201che may have briefly mentioned it to me. I had no discussions.\u201d<\/p>\n When pressed about whether they discussed U.S.sanctions, Page said, \u201cSanctions may have come up,\u201d but he added, \u201cThere was no definitive discussions about sanctions.\u201d<\/p>\n When asked about his December 2016 trip to Moscow, Page was hesitant to name some of the people with whom he met. He acknowledged that he again saw Dvorkovich and Baranov. He said he was \u201cinterested in business\u201d on the trip. Asked what business he was seeking, he answered, \u201cI can\u2019t recall anything specific.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked whether he had received any documents during one Moscow lunch, Page responded, \u201cI\u2019m almost positive I did not.\u201d<\/p>\n Page also told the committee that he was in London for an energy conference either before or after his December 2016 trip to Moscow, staying for something between one and five nights at a hotel that he could not remember.<\/p>\n Today’s WorldView newsletter<\/p>\n What’s most important from where the world meets Washington<\/p>\n In London, Page said, he had held meetings with a Russian member of his firm\u2019s advisory board named Sergey Yatsenko, who arranged for him also to meet to discuss business with the Kazakh ambassador to Britain.<\/p>\n When the Intelligence Committee pressed him about whether he had met with other Russians in London, Page responded, \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of Russians in London.\u201d<\/p>\n He then explained that he felt confident there were other Russians at the energy conference he had attended and, finally, when asked whether his testimony was that he did not meet with any other Russians in London, he responded: \u201cTo the best of my recollection, that\u2019s the case.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Page had been on the radar of the FBI at least as far back as 2013, when a bureau wiretap caught suspected Russian spies discussing their attempts to recruit him. Even after being interviewed by the investigators in that case, … Continue reading