While the circus plays out over the publication date for the latest Donald Trump-Devin Nunes collaboration, it’s worth remembering that at the heart of this story, there’s this clown.
Carter Page, who served as a foreign-policy adviser to Donald Trump’s campaign, was known to U.S. counterintelligence officials for years before he became a prominent figure in a dossier of unverified research about the future president’s ties to Russia.
Page lived in Moscow for three years, starting in 2004. His frequent attempts to interest American investors in Russian state-owned energy companies made him a Kremlin favorite, but didn’t earn him anything that looked like respect. Page ended up being recorded by American intelligence not because they started out to monitor him, because Page associated with a Russian spy runner while in the United States. Page’s recruitment by Russian agents in 2013 is mostly notable for how the Russians viewed their mark.
In a transcript of the conversation included in the court documents, Mr. Podobnyy tells his Russian colleague that Mr. Page frequently flies to Moscow and is interested in earning large sums of money. Mr. Page was apparently interested in striking a deal with Gazprom, the Russian state-run oil firm, according to the transcript. Mr. Podobnyy called Mr. Page an “idiot” but said he was enthusiastic.
Though that encounter with the Russians has often been treated as a “failed recruitment,” enthusiastic idiot Carter Page remained viable as a “Russian energy expert” in large part because the Russians found him useful and directed business his way to give his foundering agency a patina of success. Those associations keep his FBI profile high—no Christopher Steele required.
The focus on Page really heightened after he began associating with Victor Podobnyy. Podobnyy was a junior attaché at the Russian consulate and also a spy runner for the SVR. With Page, Podobnyy played at being Russian businessman. He brought in a second actor who took the role of a friendly Russian banker in these talks. Not only did they pick out Page for targeting, Page admitted initiating a meeting with Podobnyy on at least one occasion “to practice his Russian.”
It was Podobnyy who helped make Page better known.
Mr. Podobnyy promised through his contacts with Russian trade officials to steer contracts to Mr. Page.
“I will feed him empty promises,” he was overheard saying, according to the transcript.
Podobnyy was arrested for espionage just six months before Carter Page was selected as an energy adviser for the Trump campaign. The “banker” is currently serving a 30-month sentence for conspiracy. But Podobnyy’s PR work in driving business to Page likely played a role in raising Page’s profile enough to catch Trump’s attention.
As Page moved into the Trump campaign, the continued interest from the FBI that made him worth the large effort required for a FISA warrant isn’t hard to understand.
Over the course of the campaign, Mr. Page traveled to Russia at least twice and kept top Trump campaign advisers abreast of his travels, Mr. Page told the House panel.
Lived in Moscow for three years. Associated with known Russian spies. Had business directed to him by a man arrested months earlier for espionage and another guy charged with conspiracy. Then made two trips to Russia after signing onto a presidential campaign. While it probably took some time to put together all the paperwork, this doesn’t sound like a hard sell before a judge—and not one bit of that was information from Christopher Steele. That’s all what the FBI already knew about Page.
In fact, it was only after Page’s first mid-campaign trip to Moscow that the FBI turned his way again. Page has been breathtakingly inconsistent in reporting what he did and who he talked to on these Russia trips. He’s vying with Jeff Sessions for most forgetful member of the Trump team. It took months for Page to remember that yes he did tell the Trump campaign he was off to Moscow.
In January, Page told ABC News that he spoke “not one word” to anyone from the Kremlin during the trip, and then in April, he acknowledged only that he “said hello briefly to one individual, who was a board member of the New Economic School where I gave my speech.”
And then …
Under pressure from Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, however, Page admitted to sending an email to Trump officials after the trip promising a ”readout” of “incredible insights and outreach” from “Russian legislators” and “senior members of the Presidential administration” in Moscow.
If Republicans are looking for injustice in the FBI seeking a surveillance warrant on Carter Page, they’re looking in the wrong place.