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Carter William Page (born June 3, 1971) is an American petroleum industry consultant and a former foreign-policy adviser to Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential election campaign.[1] Page is the founder and managing partner of Global Energy Capital, a one-man investment fund and consulting firm specializing in the Russian and Central Asian oil and gas business.[2][3][4]
Carter Page | |
|---|---|
 Page in 2017 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Carter William Page June 3, 1971 Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S. |
| Political party | Republican |
| Education | United States Naval Academy (BS) Georgetown University (MA) New York University (MBA) SOAS, University of London (PhD) Fordham University (LLM) |
| Occupation | Investment banker Foreign policy analyst |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance |  United States |
| Branch/service |  United States Navy |
| Years of service | 1993–98 (Navy) 1998–2004 (Navy Reserve) |
| Rank |  Lieutenant |
Page was a focus of the 2017 Special Counsel investigation into the many suspicious[5][6] links between Trump associates and Russian officials and spies and Russian interference on behalf of Trump during the 2016 presidential election.[2] In April 2019, the Mueller report concluded that the investigation did not establish that Page coordinated in Russia's interference efforts.[7][8] In December 2019, the Inspector General for the Department of Justice, Michael E. Horowitz, issued a report on his inquiry into the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign and its ties to Russia. Horowitz found fault with specific aspects of the FBI's conduct, including omissions of facts and false statements to the FISA court when applying for a warrant to conduct surveillance on Page.
In 2019, the Justice Department determined the last two of four FISA warrants to surveil Page were invalid.[9][10] Page has filed four lawsuits;[further explanation needed] all were dismissed by courts.
In December 2019, Rosemary Collyer, a senior U.S. district judge and one of four FISA Court judges who approved a warrant authorizing the wiretapping of Page, issued an order saying the FBI "provided false information to the National Security Division (NSD) of the Department of Justice, and withheld material information from NSD which was detrimental to the FBI's case, in connection with four applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for authority to conduct electronic surveillance of a U.S. citizen named Carter W. Page".[11]
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Carter Page was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on June 3, 1971,[12] the son of Allan Robert Page and Rachel (Greenstein) Page.[13][14] His father was from Galway, New York, and his mother was from Minneapolis.[15] His father was a manager and executive with the Central Hudson Gas & Electric Company.[16]
Education and military service
Page was raised in Poughkeepsie, New York, and graduated from Poughkeepsie's Our Lady of Lourdes High School in 1989.[13] Page graduated with a Bachelor of Science from the United States Naval Academy in 1993; he graduated with distinction (top 10% of his class) and was chosen for the Navy's Trident Scholar program, which gives selected officers the opportunity for independent academic research and study.[17][18][19] During his senior year at the Naval Academy, he worked in the office of U.S. Representative Les Aspin as a researcher for the House Armed Services Committee.[20] He served in the U.S. Navy for five years, including a tour in western Morocco as an intelligence officer for a United Nations peacekeeping mission, and attained the rank of lieutenant.[20][21] In 1994, he completed an MA degree in National Security Studies at Georgetown University.[20] After leaving active duty in 1998, Page was a member of the Navy's inactive reserve until 2004.[21]
Further education and business
After leaving the Navy, Page completed a fellowship at the Council on Foreign Relations, and in 2001 he received an MBA degree from New York University.[17][22] In 2000, he began work as an investment banker with Merrill Lynch in the firm's London office, was a vice president in the company's Moscow office,[3] and later served as COO for Merrill Lynch's energy and power department in New York.[18] Page has stated that he worked on transactions involving Gazprom and other leading Russian energy companies. According to business people interviewed by Politico in 2016, Page's work in Moscow was at a subordinate level, and he himself remained largely unknown to decision-makers.[3]
After leaving Merrill Lynch in 2008, Page founded his own investment fund, Global Energy Capital, with partner James Richard and a former mid-level Gazprom executive, Sergei Yatsenko.[3][23] The fund operates out of a Manhattan co-working space shared with a booking agency for wedding bands, and as of late 2017, Page was the firm's sole employee.[2] Other businesspeople working in the Russian energy sector said in 2016 that the fund had yet to actually realize a project.[2][3] The building which contains Page's working space is connected to Trump Tower by an atrium, a fact Page referenced when describing his work for the 2016 Trump campaign in a 2017 letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee.[24]
Page received a PhD degree from SOAS, University of London in 2012, where he was supervised by Shirin Akiner.[2][17] His doctoral dissertation on the transition of Asian countries from communism to capitalism was rejected twice before ultimately being accepted by new examiners.[25] One of his original examiners later said Page "knew next to nothing" about the subject matter and was unfamiliar with "basic concepts" such as Marxism and state capitalism.[26] He sought unsuccessfully to publish his dissertation as a book; a reviewer described it as "very analytically confused, just throwing a lot of stuff out there without any real kind of argument."[2] Page blamed the rejection on anti-Russian and anti-American bias.[26] He later ran an international affairs program at Bard College and taught a course on energy and politics at New York University.[27][28] In more recent years, he has written columns in Global Policy Journal, a publication of Durham University.[3] In 2022, he earned an LLM (cum laude) from Fordham University School of Law.[29]
Foreign policy and ties to Russia
In 1998, Page joined the Eurasia Group, a strategy consulting firm, but left three months later. In 2017, Eurasia Group president Ian Bremmer recalled on his Twitter feed that Page's strong pro-Russian stance was "not a good fit" for the firm and that Page was its "most wackadoodle" alumnus.[30] Stephen Sestanovich later described Page's foreign-policy views as having "an edgy Putinist resentment" and a sympathy to Russian leader Vladimir Putin's criticisms of the United States.[2] Over time, Page became increasingly critical of United States foreign policy toward Russia, and more supportive of Putin, with a United States official describing Page as "a brazen apologist for anything Moscow did".[4] Page is frequently quoted by Russian state television, where he is presented as a "famous American economist".[3]
In August 2013, Page wrote, "Over the past half year, I have had the privilege to serve as an informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin in preparation for their Presidency of the G-20 Summit next month, where energy issues will be a prominent point on the agenda."[31] Page described his role differently in 2018: "I sat in on some meetings, but to call me an advisor is way over the top."[32]
Also in 2013, Evgeny Buryakov and two other Russians attempted to recruit Page as an intelligence source, and one of them, Victor Podobnyy, described Page as enthusiastic about business opportunities in Russia but an "idiot".[2][28] "I also promised him a lot," Podobnyy reported to a fellow Russian intelligence officer at the time, according to an FBI transcript of their conversation, which was covertly recorded. "How else to work with foreigners?" Podobnyy added.[28][33][34]
Page was the subject of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant in 2014, at least two years earlier than was indicated in the stories concerning his role in the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump.[35] 2017 news accounts about the warrant indicated it was granted because of Page's ties to Buryakov, Podobnyy, and the third Russian who attempted to recruit him, Igor Sporyshev.[36]
Trump 2016 presidential campaign
Trump announced Page as a foreign policy adviser in his campaign on March 21, 2016.[37] On September 23, 2016, Yahoo News reported U.S. intelligence officials investigated alleged contacts between Page and Russian officials subject to U.S. sanctions, including Igor Sechin, the president of state-run Russian oil conglomerate Rosneft.[4] Page promptly left the Trump campaign.[1][38] Upon his departure, Trump campaign communications director Jason Miller said of Page, "He’s never been a part of our campaign. Period." Another campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, stated, "we are not aware of any of his activities, past or present." [39]
Shortly after Page left the Trump campaign, the Federal Bureau of Investigation obtained another warrant from the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in October 2016 to surveil Page's communications and read his saved emails.[40][41] To issue the warrant, a federal judge concluded there was probable cause to believe that Page was a foreign agent knowingly engaging in clandestine intelligence for the Russian government.[42] The initial 90-day warrant was subsequently renewed three times.[43] The New York Times reported on May 18, 2018, that the surveillance warrant expired around October 2017.[44] The FBI did not use a so-called "filter team" to prevent irrelevant information from being seen by investigators, and it was later determined that use of such a team is not required.[41]
In January 2017, Page's name appeared repeatedly in the Steele dossier containing allegations of close interactions between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.[45][46][47][48] By the end of January 2017, Page was under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Director of National Intelligence, and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.[49] Page was not accused of any wrongdoing.[50]
The Trump Administration attempted to distance itself from Page, saying that he had never met Trump or advised him about anything,[2] but a December 2016 Page press conference in Russia contradicts the claim that Page and Trump never met.[51] Page responded to a question about his contact with Trump saying, "I've certainly been in a number of meetings with him and I've learned a tremendous amount from him."[52] The Mueller Report found that Page produced work for the campaign, traveled with Trump to a campaign speech and "Chief policy adviser Sam Clovis expressed appreciation for Page's work and praised his work to other Campaign officials".[53][54]
In October 2017, Page said he would not cooperate with requests to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee and would assert his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.[55] He said this was because they were requesting documents dating back to 2010, and he did not want to be caught in a "perjury trap". He expressed the wish to testify before the committee in an open setting.[56]
On July 21, 2018, the Justice Department released a heavily redacted version of the October 2016 FISA warrant application for Page, which expressed in part the FBI's belief that Page "has been collaborating and conspiring with the Russian government",[57] as well as that Page had been the subject of targeted recruitment by Russian intelligence agencies.[58] The application also said that Page and a Russian intelligence operative had met in secret to discuss compromising material (kompromat) the Russian government held against "Candidate #2" (presumed to be Hillary Clinton) and the possibility of the Russians giving it to the Trump campaign.[59] Former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Joseph diGenova, who was under consideration to join Trump's legal team in 2018,[60] argued before and after release of the Mueller Report that the FISA warrants to surveil Page were obtained illegally.[61] Other observers opposed diGenova's view, pointing out that the warrants were approved by four different judges, all of whom were appointed by Republican presidents.[62][63]
The FBI applications to the FISA court to wiretap Page were partly founded on the Steele dossier,[64] and the dossier "played a central and essential role"[65]: vi in the FBI applications to the FISA court to wiretap Page.
In 2019 the Justice Department determined the last two of four FISA warrants to surveil Page were invalid.[9][66]
House Intelligence Committee testimony
On November 2, 2017, Page testified[67] to the House Intelligence Committee that he had kept senior officials in the Trump campaign such as Corey Lewandowski, Hope Hicks, and J. D. Gordon informed about his contacts with the Russians[68] and had informed Jeff Sessions, Lewandowski, Hicks and other Trump campaign officials that he was traveling to Russia to give a speech in July 2016.[69][70]
Page testified that he had met with Russian government officials during this trip and had sent a post-meeting report via email to members of the Trump campaign.[71] He also indicated that campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis had asked him to sign a non-disclosure agreement about his trip.[68] Elements of Page's testimony contradicted prior claims by Trump, Sessions, and others in the Trump administration.[69][71][72][73] Lewandowski, who had previously denied knowing Page or meeting him during the campaign, said after Page's testimony that his memory was refreshed and acknowledged that he had been aware of Page's trip to Russia.[74]
Page also testified that after delivering a commencement speech at the New Economic School in Moscow, he spoke briefly with one of the people in attendance, Arkady Dvorkovich, a Deputy Prime Minister in Dmitry Medvedev's cabinet, contradicting his previous statements not to have spoken to anyone connected with the Russian government.[75] In addition, while Page denied a meeting with Sechin as alleged in the Steele dossier, he did admit he met with Andrey Baranov, Rosneft's head of investor relations.[76] The dossier alleges that Sechin offered Page a brokerage fee from the sale of up to 19 percent of Rosneft if he worked to roll back Magnitsky Act economic sanctions that had been imposed on Russia in 2012.[76][77] Page testified that he did not "directly" express support for lifting the sanctions during the meeting with Baranov, but that he might have mentioned the proposed Rosneft transaction.[76]
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When the Mueller Report was released in April 2019, it described Page's testimony about his role in the 2016 Trump campaign and connections to individuals in Russia as contradictory and confusing, and his contacts with Russians before and during the campaign as tangential and eccentric.[78] He was not charged with any crimes, though the report indicated there were unanswered questions about his actions and motives: "The investigation did not establish that Page coordinated with the Russian government in its efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election." However, with incomplete "evidence or testimony about who Page may have met or communicated with in Moscow", "Page's activities in Russia – as described in his emails with the [Trump campaign] – were not fully explained."[79][80]
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In December 2019, Michael E. Horowitz, the Inspector General for the Department of Justice, concluded an investigation into the circumstances of the FBI's investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign and its ties to Russia, codenamed Crossfire Hurricane.[81] On December 9, 2019, US Inspector General Michael Horowitz testified to Congress that the FBI showed no political bias at the initiation of the investigation into Trump and possible connections with Russia.[82][83][84] However, he also stated in a Senate hearing that he could not rule out political bias as a potential motivation.[85][86][87][88] Horowitz said he had no evidence the warrant problems were caused by intentional malfeasance or political bias rather than "gross incompetence and negligence",[89] adding his report was not an exoneration: "It doesn't vindicate anybody at the F.B.I. who touched this, including the leadership."[89][90]
Horowitz did fault the FBI for overreaching and mistakes during the investigation. These included failing to disclose, when applying for a FISA warrant to surveil Page in October 2016, that he had provided the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) details of his prior contacts with Russian officials, including an incident the FBI indicated made Page's conduct suspicious.[81][91] In June 2017, FBI received written confirmation from the CIA that Page was an "operational contact" (a source who reported information from routine activities in foreign countries) of the CIA from 2008 to 2013. However, FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith illegally doctored the email from the CIA liaison by inserting the words "and not a source", before forwarding it to another FBI agent who provided the written material for the fourth FISA application, which was submitted later in the month.[90][92][81][93][91] According to the Horowitz Report, if the FISA court judges had been informed of Page's CIA relationship, his conduct might have seemed less suspicious, although the Report did not speculate on "whether the correction of any particular misstatement or omission, or some combination thereof, would have resulted in a different outcome."[81][94] Horowitz referred Clinesmith to prosecutors for potential criminal charges.[95] On August 14, 2020, Clinesmith pleaded guilty to a felony for making a false statement by altering the email.[96][97] On January 29, 2021, Clinesmith was sentenced to 12 months federal probation and 400 hours of community service after pleading guilty in August to making a false statement.[98]
In a December 10, 2019, interview on Hannity, Page indicated that he had retained attorneys to review the Horowitz Report and determine whether he has grounds to sue.[99]
In December 2019, the Justice Department secretly notified the FISA court that in at least two of the 2017 warrant renewal requests "there was insufficient predication to establish probable cause" to believe Page was acting as a Russian agent.[100]
In a subsequent analysis of 29 unrelated FISA warrant requests, Horowitz found numerous typographical errors but just two material errors, which were determined not to impact the justifications for the resulting surveillance.[101]
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The Republican-controlled Committee released its final report on 2016 Russian election interference in August 2020, finding that despite problems with the FISA warrant requests used to surveil him, the FBI was justified in its counterintelligence concerns about Page.[102] The Committee found Page evasive and his "responses to basic questions were meandering, avoidant and involved several long diversions."[102] The Committee found that although Page's advisory role in the Trump campaign from March 2016 to September 2016 was insignificant, Russian operatives may have thought he was more important than he actually was.[102]
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On April 18, 2017, CNN reported that, according to U.S. officials, information from the dossier had been used as part of the basis for getting the October 2016 FISA warrant to monitor Page.[103][104] The Justice Department's inspector general revealed in 2019 that in the six weeks prior to its receipt of Steele's memos, the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane team "had discussions about the possibility of obtaining FISAs targeting Page and Papadopoulos, but it was determined that there was insufficient information at the time to proceed with an application to the court."[65]: 101
The role of evidence from the dossier in seeking FISA warrants soon became the subject of much debate. How much of the evidence was based on the dossier? Was it a "significant portion"[105] or only a "smart part" of the FISA application?[62]
In February 2018, the Nunes memo alleged FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe's testimony backed Republican claims that the "dossier formed 'a significant portion' of the Carter Page FISA application".[105] McCabe pushed back and said his testimony had been "selectively quoted" and "mischaracterized".[105] He also "denied having ever told Congress that the [FISA] warrant would not have been sought without information from the dossier".[106]
Before the Crossfire Hurricane team received dossier material on September 19, 2016, they had already gathered enough evidence from their own sources to make them seriously consider seeking FISA warrants on Carter Page, but they needed a bit more, and, because their own sources "'corroborated Steele's reporting' with respect to Page",[107] the mutually independent corroborations gave them more confidence to make that decision.
The IG report described a changed situation after the FBI received Steele's memos and said the dossier then played a "central role" in the seeking of FISA warrants on Carter Page[65] in terms of establishing FISA's low bar[108] for probable cause: "FBI and Department officials told us the Steele reporting 'pushed [the FISA proposal] over the line' in terms of establishing probable cause."[65]: 412 [109]
FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe mentioned the dossier's role in the start of the investigation and the FISA warrant:
'We started the investigations without the dossier. We were proceeding with the investigations before we ever received that information,' McCabe told CNN. 'Was the dossier material important to the [FISA] package? Of course, it was. As was every fact included in that package. Was it the majority of what was in the package? Absolutely not.'[110]
According to Ken Dilanian, "The so-called dossier formed only a smart part of the evidence used to meet the legal burden of establishing 'probable cause' that Page was an agent of Russia."[62]
In summary, the dossier formed a "smart part"[62] of the evidence, "not the majority",[110] yet, like the proverbial "last drop", it was just what was needed to push them "over the line"[65] to make that decision. That's how it "played a central role"[65] in the seeking of FISA warrants on Carter Page.
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Against DNC and Perkins Coie
In October 2018, Carter Page unsuccessfully sued the Democratic National Committee (DNC), Perkins Coie, and two Perkins Coie partners, for defamation.[111][112] The lawsuit was dismissed on January 31, 2019. Page said he intended to appeal the decision.[112][113]
On January 30, 2020, Page filed another defamation lawsuit (Case: 1:20-cv-00671, Filed: 01/30/20) against the DNC and Perkins Coie, naming Marc Elias and Michael Sussmann as defendants.[114] The suit was dismissed.[115]
Against Oath Inc. (Yahoo! News and HuffPost). Filed by Carter Page
On February 11, 2021, Page lost a defamation suit he had filed against Yahoo! News and HuffPost for their articles that described his activities mentioned in the Steele dossier. The judge said that Page admitted the articles about his potential contacts with Russian officials were essentially true.[116]
Page's suit targeted Oath for 11 articles, especially one written by Michael Isikoff and published by Yahoo! News in September 2016. The judge dismissed the suit on February 11, 2021,[117] noting that "Page's arguments regarding Isikoff's description of the dossier and Steele were 'either sophistry or political spin'." He also said that Page "failed to allege actual malice by any of the authors, and that the three articles written by HuffPost employees were true".[118] Page was represented by attorneys John Pierce[119] and L. Lin Wood, who was denied permission to represent Page because of his actions in the attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election in favor of President Donald Trump.[120]
In January 2022, Page lost an effort to revive the defamation case over Isikoff's article. Chief Justice Collins J. Seitz Jr. said "the article at the crux of the case—by Yahoo News reporter Michael Isikoff—was either completely truthful or, 'at a minimum,' conveyed a true 'gist,' even if it included some 'minor' or 'irrelevant' incorrect statements." Bloomberg Law reported that "The court dismissed as far-fetched Page's theories about a conspiracy among interconnected media and political figures to tarnish Trump by concocting the Russia investigation from thin air."[121]
On May 16, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a defamation suit filed by Page.[122]
Against USA, DOJ, FBI, and several officials
On November 27, 2020, Page filed a $75 million (approximately $87 million in 2023) suit against the United States, DOJ, FBI, and several former leading officials alleging they violated "his Constitutional and other legal rights in connection with unlawful surveillance and investigation of him by the United States Government". The defendants included James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Kevin Clinesmith, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Joe Pientka III, Stephen Soma, and Brian J. Auten.[123][124]
The suit was dismissed on September 1, 2022, by United States district court judge Dabney L. Friedrich, who wrote:
To the extent these allegations are true, there is little question that many individual defendants, as well as the agency as a whole, engaged in wrongdoing. Even so, Page has brought no actionable claim against any individual defendant or against the United States.[125]
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- Page, Carter (2020). Abuse and Power: How an Innocent American Was Framed in an Attempted Coup Against the President. Regnery Publishing. ISBN 978-1-68451-121-1.
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