‘I have never been an agent’
Trump campaign adviser denies being involved in ‘clandestine’ Russia work
WASHINGTON— Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page on Sunday denied he was an intelligence agent for Russia, while lawmakers appeared on the morning political shows to urge U.S. President Donald Trump to act tougher toward the Kremlin. Page’s denial was his first public response to the release on Saturday of a wiretap application that said he engaged in “clandestine intelligence activities” on behalf of Russia. He said allegations he worked on the country’s behalf as an agent or an informal adviser were “ridiculous” and a “complete joke.”
“I’ve never been an agent of a foreign power by any stretch of the imagination,” Page said on CNN’s State of the Union. The heavily redacted documents were released after a week of developments following the president’s meeting on Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. At a joint news conference with the Russian leader, Trump said he had no reason to believe that Russia would have interfered in the 2016 election, contradicting the consensus of the U.S. intelligence community; he later said he misspoke. The White House also announced that it was extending an invitation for Putin to come to Washington this fall, even as intelligence officials and lawmakers said they still did not fully understand what happened at the Helsinki meeting.
South Carolina’s Sen. Lindsey O. Graham, a sometime Trump ally, pleaded with the president on CBS News to impose “new sanctions, heavy-handed sanctions” on Russia before Putin visits Washington. “Come up with a set of sanctions that would be a hammer over Russia’s head if they continue to interfere in the 2018 election,” Graham said on CBS’s Face the Nation. “Just have sanctions that can fall on Russia like a hammer ... If you were really tough with Putin, he would not be doing what he is doing,” Graham said.
Graham and another lawmaker, the House Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Adam B. Schiff said they still do not know what Trump and Putin said when they met privately in Helsinki last week.
“We have no idea what this president, our president, agreed to,” Schiff said on ABC’s This Week. “Ostensibly there may have been agreements on Ukraine, on Syria, and who knows what else? ... It is negligent with our national security for us not to know.” Schiff said Trump is “acting like someone who is compromised by Russia.”
“It may very well be that he is compromised or it may very well be that he believes that he’s compromised, that the Russians have information on him,” he said.
Florida’s Sen. Marco Rubio, RFla., the author of a bill that would impose severe sanctions on Russia if it was determined to have interfered in a U.S. election, said Trump should approach meetings with Putin without illusions about the Russian leader’s endgame.