Russia might have tried to infiltrate Donald Trump's campaign last year through several advisers, including former policy adviser Carter Page, according to intelligence gathered by the FBI last summer, U.S. officials said Friday.
However, the officials told CNN that they do not know whether Page was aware that Moscow might be trying to access the campaign through him.
Page, whose July 2016 speech to the New Economic School in Moscow initially led the FBI to examine Russian ties to the Trump campaign, also could have unknowingly talked to Kremlin agents, simply based on how such operatives work, they said.
"My assumption throughout the last 26 years I've been going there has always been that any Russian person might share information with the Russian government . . . as I have similarly done with the CIA, the FBI and other government agencies in the past," Page told CNN in disputing its report.
Page, 45, a former Merrill Lynch investment banker, quit the Trump campaign last September amid questions about his Russian ties — and reportedly was among several associates who met with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
He is among three former Trump campaign associates who have volunteered to testify before Congress in its probe of Russian meddling in the presidential election.
The others are former campaign manager Paul Manafort and adviser Roger Stone.
The U.S. officials told CNN Friday that Page's conversations with possible Russian spies were being analyzed as part of broader intelligence-gathering efforts by spy agencies.
They also would not disclose the specifics of Page's discussions, according to the report.
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