Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Testimony insight on Russia effort, Democrat says
WASHINGTON — The top Democrat on the House intelligence committee says testimony from a former foreign-policy adviser to President Donald Trump’s campaign gives new insight into Russian efforts to influence Trump’s operation.
In an interview Tuesday, Rep. Adam Schiff of California said “more and more pictures of the puzzle” were coming together after testimony from Carter Page, the former foreign-policy adviser, and a guilty plea from George Papadopoulos, another foreign-policy adviser to Trump’s Republican campaign.
Page, an unpaid adviser who left the campaign before Trump was elected, acknowledged in closed testimony to Congress last week that he had contact with a high-level Russian official while in Russia last year, according to a transcript released Monday. He told the House intelligence panel that he “briefly said hello” to Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich when he traveled to Russia for a speech.
Under repeated questions about the contact — which he had at times denied in the past — Page said he had spoken to Dvorkovich after his July 2016 speech at Moscow’s New Economic School.
Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his Russian contacts as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference. Court documents unsealed last week refer to a professor who told Papadopoulos in April 2016 that the Russians had “dirt” on Democrat Hillary Clinton in the form of emails.
“You have these two efforts in parallel going on with two of these advisers,” Schiff said. “You have them both reporting back to the campaign. … I hardly think that these are coincidental.”
Page called his words with Dvorkovich a “brief interaction,” but Schiff and other Democrats on the panel were skeptical.
According to the transcript, Schiff produced a campaign email during the questioning in which Page had written to other Trump advisers that Dvorkovich had told him “in a private conversation” that he had expressed support for Trump and the desire to work together. Page responded that the conversation had been less than 10 seconds long.
The testimony was part of the House committee’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether it is linked to Trump’s campaign. Page’s trip raised questions just as the FBI began its counterintelligence investigation into the Russian meddling, and he has offered contradictory accounts about whom he met there. But his testimony on Thursday was under oath.
The House panel released the transcript as part of an agreement with Page, who had been subpoenaed by the committee. Parts of the transcript are redacted.
Page told the panel he had informed some members of the Trump campaign about the trip, including then-Sen. Jeff Sessions. He said he mentioned in passing to Sessions, who is now U.S. attorney general, that he was preparing to visit Russia and Sessions “had no reaction whatsoever.”
Page has insisted — and continued to insist in the interview — that the trip was personal and not campaign related.
However, the committee produced an email in which Page wrote to campaign officials and asked them to let him know “if you have any reservations or thoughts on how you’d prefer me to focus these remarks,” apparently referring to the speech he was giving in Moscow.
Also on Tuesday, the same committee was questioning Trump’s longtime bodyguard, Keith Schiller. Schiller, who started working for Trump in 1999, was being questioned in private by members and staff of the committee. Schiller avoided reporters as he arrived on Capitol Hill.
He brings a much more intimate knowledge of Trump, his candidacy and presidency than past witnesses. Before leaving the White House in August as head of Oval Office operations, Schiller was often the first and last aide Trump would see each day.
During the campaign, Schiller heard nearly every conversation and phone call as he sat in cars by Trump’s side, traveling between rallies, former campaign aides said.
In a new book published Tuesday, Donna Brazile, then the interim chief of the Democratic National Committee, writes that hackers hounded the party into the final days of the 2016 election, breaking into a server carrying critical voter data.
The breach of the Democratic National Committee captured national attention when it was revealed by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike in June 2016. Brazile reveals that the intrusions continued for months afterward and compromised some of the committee’s most closely guarded information.
The intrusion wasn’t found until Oct. 21, just over two weeks before the vote, when malicious software was discovered on a backup server code-named Raider.
Brazile’s book doesn’t explicit identify the hackers involved, but Mike Murray, one of the volunteers, said he believed it was Fancy Bear — one of the two Kremlin-linked groups of hackers identified by CrowdStrike.