FBI: Russia tried to recruit eventual Trump adviser

Russian intelligence operatives tried in 2013 to recruit a U.S. businessman and eventual foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign who is now part of the FBI investigation into Russia’s interference into the U.S. election, according to federal court documents and a statement issued by the businessman.

The businessman, Carter Page, met with one of three Russians who were eventually charged with being undeclared officers with Russia’s foreign intelligence service, known as the SVR. The FBI interviewed Page in 2013 as part of an investigation into the spy ring, but decided that he had not known the man was a spy, and the bureau never accused Page of wrongdoing.

The court documents say Page, who founded an investment company in New York called Global Energy Capital, provided documents about the energy business to one of the Russians, Victor Podobnyy, thinking he was a businessman who could help with brokering deals in Russia.

In fact, Podobnyy was an SVR officer posing as an attaché at the Russian mission to the United Nations.

Court documents do not identify Page, but the details in a statement he emailed to reporters Tuesday match the individual described as “Male-1” in the court case. Page’s contact with the Russian spy was first reported Monday by BuzzFeed News.

The disclosure is the latest to shed light on Page’s extensive contacts with Russian businessmen and government officials. A former Moscow-based investment banker for Merrill Lynch, Page joined the Trump campaign last year and traveled to Russia in July to deliver a speech to the New Economic School, a Moscow university.

The trip caught the attention of U.S. intelligence agencies. Later that month, the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation into Russian attempts to influence the presidential election and whether any of Trump’s associates were involved in that effort. U.S. businessmen who visit Russia, even those who are not advising a presidential campaign, are frequently targeted by Russian operatives trying to collect information about the United States.

Page has given few specifics about whom he met with on that trip. In an interview last month, he said he had met with “mostly scholars.”

According to the court documents filed in 2015, the FBI secretly recorded Podobnyy and another Russian operative named Igor Sporyshev discussing efforts to recruit Page, who was then working in New York as a consultant.

To record their conversations, the FBI inserted a listening device into binders that were passed to the Russian intelligence operatives during an energy conference, according to a former U.S. intelligence official. The Russians then took the binders into a secure room where they thought they could evade U.S. intelligence eavesdropping attempts.

In a transcript of the conversation included in the court documents, Podobnyy tells his Russian colleague that Page frequently flies to Moscow and is interested in earning large sums of money.