Carter Page testimony highlights: Trump aide dismisses Russian interference

Carter Page, who advised President Donald Trump’s campaign on foreign policy, jousted with House Intelligence Committee members for nearly seven hours last week as lawmakers grilled him about his contacts with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign.

But unlike other witnesses in the committee’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, Page struck a deal to release his interview transcript publicly, and the committee posted it — with classified details redacted — on Monday evening.

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The longtime energy consultant has drawn scrutiny for a July 2016 trip to Russia. He was also named in a disputed dossier, compiled by a former British intelligence agent, Christopher Steele, that purported to detail connections between Trump and the Kremlin. Page has dismissed the “dodgy dossier” repeatedly, but he’s also offered erratic and sometimes evasive answers about his own Russia connections and his role in the campaign.

Here are the highlights of his marathon interview, which he conducted without a lawyer guiding his responses:

Page asked campaign officials to OK trip to Moscow: During Page’s testimony, he revealed that he sent an email to several campaign officials in advance of his trip to Moscow, including then-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, Trump adviser Hope Hicks (now the White House communications director) and Trump campaign policy aide J.D. Gordon. Page told lawmakers that Lewandowski said he could go, so long as he went outside of his capacity as a Trump campaign adviser.

Conveying support from deputy Russian prime minister: Page told the committee that after his trip, he relayed to the campaign that in a “private conversation” with Russia’s deputy prime minister, Arkady Dvorkovich, that Dvorkovich had “expressed strong support for Mr. Trump and a desire to work together toward devising better solutions in response to the vast range of current international problems.” Page said the exchange was just “a general sentiment of, you know, hope for the future. That’s all he expressed in that brief hello.”

Page also acknowledged sending a separate email to campaign advisers, including Gordon, indicating he planned to “send you guys a readout soon regarding some incredible insights and outreach I’ve received from a few Russian legislators and senior members of the Presidential administration here.”

Meeting with the FBI: Page confirmed that he met with the FBI several times in its ongoing investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. He said agents generally asked him questions about the events described in the Steele dossier, a document that Trump himself has dismissed as fake and that has come under renewed scrutiny because it was commissioned by an opposition research firm on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s campaign lawyer. Page said he hadn’t been informed by special counsel Robert Mueller that he should expect to be indicted in the probe.

How Page got to the Trump campaign: Page told the House Intelligence Committee that he volunteered himself to become part of the Trump campaign and that the man who first connected him was New York State GOP Chairman Ed Cox. Page described his office building as located next to Trump Tower, and said he had “always had an admiration for President Trump.” So a few months after the mogul launched his campaign in 2015, Page reached out to Cox and asked him for help connecting with the Trump camp. Page said Cox then introduced him to Trump’s campaign manager, Lewandowski.

Page said that his initial meeting with Lewandowski was in January 2016 and that Lewandowski was multitasking and only partially focused on their interactions. He added that he signed a nondisclosure agreement when he joined the campaign, at the request of campaign adviser Sam Clovis.

Contact with Bannon: Page said he recalled receiving text messages from Steve Bannon — soon to be a senior adviser to the Trump White House — in January 2017 advising him against appearing on MSNBC. “He just said that’s probably not a good idea,” Page recalled under questioning from Schiff.

Page said Bannon ultimately called him and warned him against making his TV appearance, which he said was slated not long after the Steele dossier was publicly posted. Page said the conversation came around the same time he had received a letter from Jones Day, the law firm that represented the Trump campaign, imploring him not to “give the wrong impression that you’re part of the administration or the Trump campaign.”

“And my response to that was, of course I’m not,” Page added. He said he ultimately agreed not to do the interview.

Playing down the influence of Russia-linked ads: Last week, the House Intelligence Committee questioned lawyers for Facebook, Twitter and Google about thousands of paid, Russia-linked ads on the companies’ platforms and their influence during the campaign. Page, in his opening statement, characterized these as “private sector companies … passively allowing a few hundred thousand dollars of social media advertisements that virtually no one paid attention to.”

Opening statement sidesteps Russian interference: In his opening remarks to the committee, Page did not acknowledge the consensus of the U.S. intelligence community that Russian players had interfered in the election. Instead, he focused on what he said were “epic fictitious stories” perpetrated by “opposition political research” that “maliciously attacked me and the Trump campaign” in the final months before Election Day. Though Trump won the election, Page in his opening statement said: “I hope that the lessons from the extraordinary damage suffered by the Trump campaign and myself may help America avoid future domestic attacks on our fundamental democratic principles and constitutional foundations.”

Fifth Amendment rights: Under questioning from the committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, Page acknowledged that he had invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination to avoid turning over relevant documents to the committee. But Page, without a lawyer, repeatedly indicated he had no incriminating documents in his possession, prompting Schiff to question why his Fifth Amendment rights would be relevant. Page, at various moments, offered to turn over certain emails to the committee that he alleged would undermine the contention that collusion with Russia had occurred. But he said he refused to comply with the committee’s subpoena for documents in part because of a distrust in law enforcement that he said was stoked during the 2016 campaign.

GOP platform: Page told the committee that he recalled emailing with members of the Trump campaign and other advisers about a last-minute change to the GOP platform at least year’s Republican National Convention that softened some language regarding the party’s support for Ukraine. Page had emailed other campaign advisers, including Gordon, on July 14 to say “excellent work” on the Ukraine amendment.

What the committee wanted to know: House Intelligence Committee members rarely reveal the inner workings of their closed-door interviews, so the decision to provide a transcript — a condition that Page demanded — provided a rare glimpse into their lines of inquiry in this sensitive investigation. Here’s a rough list of their avenues of inquiry:

— Details about Page’s July 2016 trip to Moscow to deliver a speech to the New Economic School, and the Russian officials he interacted while he was there.

— Page’s relationship with senior Trump campaign officials and whether he had colluded, coordinated or conspired with Russians to influence the election in any way.

— His trip to Budapest after the Republican National Convention.

— Page’s communications with Trump campaign officials about a change in the GOP platform regarding Ukraine.

— His decision to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights to avoid turning over documents.

— His interactions with the FBI and special counsel’s office.

— Page’s distrust in the intelligence community’s belief that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

— His interactions with fellow campaign adviser George Papadopoulos.

— How Page came to advise the Trump campaign.

— Page’s energy industry business relationships.