Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page was interviewed five times for a total of ten hours in March as part of the FBI investigation into possible election collusion between the Trump team and Russian government, The Washington Post reported Monday.
Page disclosed last month that he had been interviewed by the FBI, but it was not known that he met multiple times with investigators.
According to The Post, the meetings occurred over a four-week period. Page did not take a lawyer with him to the sessions, the newspaper reported. (RELATED: In Letter Praising Comey Firing, Carter Page Reveals He’s Been Interviewed By The FBI)
Asked if five is an accurate count of the number of meetings with FBI agents, Page told The Daily Caller: “give or take, yeah.”
Page is reportedly a subject of investigations being conducted by the FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller. The probes initially centered on campaign collusion, but they have expanded in recent weeks to look into potential financial crimes.
An energy consultant with business experience in Moscow, Page served for several months as an unpaid foreign policy adviser to the campaign last year, beginning in March. He held a small role on the campaign, and Trump officials have attempted to distance themselves from the U.S. Naval Academy graduate.
A trip that Page made to Moscow in July, while still with the campaign, has been a focal point for investigators.
FBI officials obtained a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrant on Page in September, just after he officially left the campaign. The application for that warrant reportedly cited an uncorroborated dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele. Steele, who had been hired by a political research firm working for an ally of Hillary Clinton’s, claimed in the dossier that Page met secretly with Russian spies during the Moscow trip.
Page denies the claims in the Steele document, which he calls the “dodgy dossier.”
Page tells TheDC that FBI investigators asked him repeatedly about claims made in the dossier. Sources familiar with the interviews confirmed to The Post that the dossier was a focus of the interviews.
TheDC asked Page why he did not take an attorney to the meetings, a standard practice recommended by most lawyers, but he did not respond to that specific question.
Instead, he provided a statement acknowledging that he had “extensive discussions” and “frank and open conversations” with the FBI.
“During my extensive discussions with the FBI agents just weeks before Comey’s departure, they acknowledged that I’m a loyal American veteran but indicated that their ‘management’ was concerned that I did not believe the conclusions of the fake January 6 intelligence report,” Page says.
“Our frank and open conversations gave me confidence that there are still logical, honest individuals at the Bureau who respect civil rights and the Constitution,” he added.
