Records rebut Trump’s claim of vindication
President Trump claimed without evidence Sunday that his administration’s release of topsecret documents related to the surveillance of a former campaign aide had confirmed that the Justice Department and the FBI had “misled the courts” in the early stages of the Russia investigation.
“Looking more & more like the Trump Campaign for President was illegally being spied upon (surveillance) for the political gain of Crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC,” Trump wrote on Twitter, referring to the Democratic National Committee.
In a series of early morning tweets, Trump left unmentioned how the documents laid out in stark detail why the FBI was interested in the former campaign adviser, Carter Page: “The FBI believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government.” They also said Page had “established relationships with Russian government officials, including Russian intelligence officers,” and had been “collaborating and conspiring with the Russian government.”
Those assessments were included in an October 2016 application to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to wiretap Page. The New York Times and other news outlets got the documents through Freedom of Information Act lawsuits.
On Sunday, Page dismissed the claims in the documents. “I’ve never been an agent of a foreign power in any — by any stretch of the imagination,” Page told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
He played down a letter he wrote in 2013 in which he described himself as “an informal adviser to the staff of the Kremlin.”
“I sat in on some meetings, but to call me an adviser I think is way over the top,” Page said. “This is really nothing, and just an attempt to distract from the real crimes that are shown in this misleading document.”
Supporters of Trump have seized on the fact that the FBI, in making the case to judges that Page might be a Russian agent, used some claims included in a notorious Democratic-funded dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent.