Ex-Trump campaign adviser Carter Page on Sunday defiantly refuted claims in a newly released Department of Justice and FBI surveillance warrant, calling the controversial FISA application “a complete joke.”
In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Page said the warrant’s characterization of him as an agent of a foreign power at a 2013 G-20 conference in St. Petersburg pure “spin.”
“I sat in on some meetings but to call me an adviser, I think is way over the top,” he said.
“I might have participated in a few meetings that a lot of people, including people from the Obama administration were sitting in on in Geneva and Paris… I've never been anywhere near what's being described here."
Page railed that the warrant itself is “so ridiculous. It's just beyond words.”
“You're talking about misleading the courts,” he said. “It's just so misleading going through the 400 plus page documents, where do we even begin? It's literally a complete joke.”
He also called it a “good question” as to whether DOJ officials — taking a dig at former FBI Director James Comey — still believe their surveillance of him was the right thing to do.
“They were misled," he insisted, adding: “So I’m hoping the Department of Justice will take steps to start correcting the false record in a number of courts. The FISA is just the first part.”
“This is really nothing and just an attempt to distract from the real crimes that are shown in this misleading document,” he added, referring to one page in the FISA application that “talks about disguised propaganda including the planting of false or misleading articles … That's kind of the pot calling the kettle black by Mr. Comey.”
He went on to refute allegations about two meetings with Russians, including Viktor Podobnyy, an attache to Russia’s delegation to the U.N. who was reportedly employed by Russia’s foreign intelligence service.
"We had coffee one time, met him at a conference… gave him some of my class notes that my students at New York University were looking at,” he said. “And it was in one ear and out the other. He never asked me to do anything. It's just preposterous."
And he dismissed another meeting in 2016 with Russian spy chief Igor Sporyshev about a supposed move to lift Ukraine-related sanctions against Russia and that Russia offered dirt on Hillary Clinton as coming from “the dodgy dossier” compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele.
“When I was [in Russia] in July of 2016… a few people might have brought [the sanctions] up in passing,” he conceded. “It's a major economic issue. So there may have been a loose conversation… There was nothing in terms of any nefarious behavior.”
But he flat -out denied ever hearing from a Russian anything about compromising material on Clinton: “Never, never,” he declared.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.