Carter Page acknowledges working as informal adviser to Russia

“I’ve never been an agent of [a] foreign power by any stretch of the imagination,” said former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. | J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo Carter Page acknowledges working as informal adviser to Russia

Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page on Sunday called allegations that he was a Russian agent “spin,” a “ridiculous smear campaign” and “literally a complete joke” — but admitted that he had worked as an informal adviser to the Russian government.

Page appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” following the release Saturday of new documents tied to his wiretapping, including the government’s application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and subsequent renewals. He found himself sparring with an increasingly exasperated Jake Tapper, the host.

The FBI wrote in the documents that it believed Russia was trying to recruit Page, a foreign policy aide on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign who now sits at the eye of the storm in ongoing investigations into Russian electoral interference and possible Trump campaign collusion. Page called himself an “informal adviser” to Russia in a 2013 letter.

“I’ve never been an agent of [a] foreign power by any stretch of the imagination,” Page said Sunday.

Page acknowledged under questioning from Tapper that “there may have been a loose conversation” with Russian officials about U.S. sanctions, and that “a few people might have brought it up in passing.” But he added that “there was nothing in terms of any nefarious behavior” and that he’d never heard from Russians about compromising information on Hillary Clinton.

Page specifically denied having ever communicated with Igor Sechin or Igor Diveykin, Russians who were listed in the documents. “Never in my life,“ Page replied when Tapper followed up with a question about him having met with Sechin, the president of a Russian energy company.

Instead, Page trained his ire on the U.S. government officials who had sought to surveil him — despite the fact that multiple FISC judges, all Republican appointees, had signed off on the wiretapping.

His comments dovetailed with angry tweets Sunday morning from Trump, who inveighed against “the whole FISA scam which led to the rigged Mueller Witch Hunt” and insinuated that “the Department of ‘Justice’ and FBI misled the courts.”