Carter Page, the former Trump campaign adviser who is the focus of a Republican memo alleging the FBI abused surveillance rules to spy on him, said on Tuesday he’s never communicated with the president.
“I never spoke with him since. I never spoke with him any time in my life,” he told ABC’s “Good Morning America” after being asked whether he has talked with the president since the FBI began monitoring him in October 2016.
Pressed by anchor George Stephanopoulos if he had communicated with the president via phone, email or text, Page replied: “Never.”
But that seems at odds with what Page told a reporter during a question-and-answer session after a speech he gave in Moscow in December 2016. The speech was aired live by Kremlin-connected Russia Today.
He was asked about briefings he gave while with the Trump campaign and whether he ever talked to the then-candidate.
“I certainly have been in a number of meetings with him and I’ve learned a tremendous amount from him,” he said. “In terms of actual briefings that’s not something I like to talk about.”
Page is named in a memo written by Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee that claims the FBI used information contained in a controversial dossier partly financed by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign to get authorization to surveil Page in 2016.
Page said his civil rights were assaulted by the FBI as it tried to get a warrant to monitor him.
“There’s no basis for it,” he said. “If you think about our Constitution – due process rights, First Amendment rights – it was just shredded, the Constitution. ”
Asked about being under the FBI’s radar after being part of a Russian recruitment effort in 2013, Page said he was helping the bureau.
“I was a witness to a case they were doing. So I was supporting the FBI, ” he said.
But questioned about reports he gave documents to a Russian charged with espionage, Page dismissed it as spin.
“See, this is sort of spin because I was teaching a course down Broadway here at NY U and I told them a couple of things about what I was talking about in my course, and I gave them a couple of my notes, from the … or documents I gave my students,” he said.
“It sounds – giving documents, to a quote unquote spy – it sounds a lot worse than reality, but that’s reality.”
Victor Podobnyy, a Russian intelligence agent who was claiming to work at Moscow’s UN mission in New York, tried to recruit Page, according to court documents.
Podobnyy, who had diplomatic immunity, fled the country.