Trump
campaign approved adviser’s trip to Moscow
Campaign
leaders knew in advance of Carter Page’s Russia visit in July 2016,
former aide says.
By JOSH MEYER AND
KENNETH P. VOGEL 3/8/17, 7:35 AM CET Updated 3/8/17, 7:36 AM CET
Donald Trump’s
former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski approved foreign policy
adviser Carter Page’s now-infamous trip to Moscow last summer on
the condition that he would not be an official representative of the
campaign, according to a former campaign adviser.
A few weeks before
he traveled to Moscow to give a July 7 speech, Page asked J.D.
Gordon, his supervisor on the campaign’s National Security Advisory
Committee, for permission to make the trip, and Gordon strongly
advised against it, Gordon, a retired naval officer, told POLITICO.
Page then emailed
Lewandowski and spokeswoman Hope Hicks asking for formal approval,
and was told by Lewandowski that he could make the trip, but not as
an official representative of the campaign, the former campaign
adviser said. The adviser spoke on the condition of anonymity because
he has not been authorized to discuss internal campaign matters.
The trip is now a
focus of congressional and FBI investigations into Russian influence
in the 2016 presidential election.
Lewandowski told
POLITICO he did not recall the email exchange with Page, but he did
not deny that it occurred.
“Is it possible
that he emailed me asking if he could go to Russia as a private
citizen?” Lewandowski said Tuesday. “I don’t remember that, but
I probably got 1,000 emails a day at that time, and I can’t
remember every single one that I was sent. And I wouldn’t
necessarily remember if I had a one-word response to him saying he
could do something as a private citizen.”
Hicks declined to
comment. But a former campaign official said campaign officials did
not discuss Page’s planned trip before he left for Moscow.
“No one discussed
the trip within the campaign and certainly not with candidate Trump
directly,” said the former campaign official.
The official pointed
to a July statement from Hicks that declared that Page was in Moscow
in a private capacity and was not representing the campaign. That
statement came in response to media reports from Moscow about Page’s
presence there.
Both Lewandowski and
the White House official cast Page as a minor character on the
periphery of the campaign, who was a foreign policy adviser in name
only.
“I’ve never met
or spoken to Carter Page in my life,” Lewandowski said.
Gordon and Page had
no comment on whether the Trump campaign officially sanctioned the
trip, which has drawn the attention of investigators from the FBI and
congressional committees investigating possible Trump campaign ties
with Russian officials before the election.
And while Page has
repeatedly denied wrongdoing in connection with his Moscow visit, it
is now drawing increased scrutiny as a result of new disclosures
about his contact two weeks later with Russian ambassador Sergey
Kislyak at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Just days
after Kislyak talked to Page, Gordon and a third campaign official,
WikiLeaks disseminated thousands of emails stolen from the Democratic
National Committee’s servers — a hack that U.S. intelligence
later attributed to the Russian government.
No connection
between any of those three events has been alleged publicly or
confirmed. But on Tuesday, Page confirmed that he is one of about a
dozen individuals and organizations contacted by the Senate
Intelligence Committee and asked to preserve relevant materials for
its investigation into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts
to meddle in the 2016 presidential election.
“I will do
everything in my power to reasonably ensure that all information
concerning my activities related to Russia last year is preserved,”
Page said in a letter to committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and
ranking member Mark Warner (D-Va.).
In his letter, Page
again denied any wrongdoing and repeated his claims that former
officials of Hillary Clinton’s campaign and other Democrats have
been spreading false information about the trip and Page’s other
connections to Russia.
Page’s trip to
Moscow has been the subject of intense speculation for months, but
many of the details remain cloudy.
A longtime oil and
energy industry consultant, Page had already spent considerable time
in Russia before making the trip, most recently as founder and
managing partner of the Global Energy Capital investment and
consulting firm, which specializes in Russian and Central Asian oil
and gas business.
The firm’s website
says Page has been involved in more than $25 billion of transactions
in the energy and power sector and that he spent three years in
Moscow, where he was an adviser on key transactions for Russian
state-owned gas company Gazprom and other energy-related companies.
Page has insisted
that he was in Moscow to give a commencement address at the New
Economic School there based on his scholarly research, and that his
visit was “outside of my informal, unpaid role” on the Trump
campaign. He also said he had divested any stake in Gazprom and that
he had “not met this year [2016] with any sanctioned official in
Russia despite the fact that there are no restrictions on U.S.
persons speaking with such individuals.”
But last September,
top congressional lawmakers were briefed on suspected efforts by
Russia to meddle in the election. Soon after, then-Senate Minority
Leader Harry Reid of Nevada asked FBI Director James Comey to
investigate meetings between a Trump official, later identified as
Page, and “high ranking sanctioned individuals” in Moscow that he
believed were evidence of “significant and disturbing ties”
between the Trump campaign and Moscow.
Trump campaign
officials took steps to distance themselves from Page, who had been
publicly identified as an adviser as recently as Aug. 24. He
announced Sept. 26 that he was taking a leave of absence from the
campaign, saying the accusations were untrue but causing too much of
a “distraction.”
But even after
Russia was linked to the hacking effort against Democrats, the Trump
campaign did not seek to question Page about his trip, the campaign
adviser said.
Asked what Page did
while in Moscow, the adviser said, “I have no idea. I didn’t want
to know.”
The adviser also
said he was not aware of anyone else on the campaign who discussed
the trip with Page, either to glean any foreign policy insight from
him or to determine whether any damage control was needed based on
his contacts.
“Nobody talked
about it. It was such an ugly topic. Even when I saw him at the
convention, I didn’t talk to him about it,” the adviser said,
adding that some in the campaign had expressed concern that any
public appearances in Moscow by Page would send a bad message.
The campaign fired
Lewandowski on June 20, before Page took the trip. Paul Manafort, who
replaced Lewandowski as manager and later became chairman, said he
had no knowledge of any aspect of Page’s trip, including whether
Lewandowski or anyone else approved it.
In recent days,
Page’s contact with Russians resurfaced with news reports that he,
Gordon and senior Trump campaign adviser Sen. Jeff Sessions all
engaged in discussions with Kislyak at an event on the sidelines of
the GOP convention.
Page has declined to
comment on what they discussed, saying it was private, while Gordon
characterized the conversations as harmless efforts to improve
U.S.-Russia ties.
The former campaign
adviser on Tuesday said Page and the ambassador had a lengthy
discussion and that they were at times joined by Gordon and two other
ambassadors from the region. The adviser did not know whether Page or
Kislyak initiated the conversation.
Authors:
Josh Meyer and
Kenneth P. Vogel
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