The Moscow Mystery: Carter Page on the Trump Campaign
This article covers Carter Page’s tumultuous tenure on the 2016 Trump Campaign and his mysterious trip to Moscow.
It is the sixth entry in the series “Mysterious Misfits: the 2016 Trump Foreign Policy Team and the Russian Election Interference Campaign.”
While it is not necessary to read previous entries, it is recommended.
The first article covers the establishment of the 2016 Trump Campaign Foreign Policy team and an effort to find Hillary’s “missing emails.”
The second article covers how George Papadopoulos learned that the Russians possessed Hillary Clinton’s emails.
The third article describes how Papadopoulos revealed that the Russians had Hillary’s emails and his attempts to arrange a Trump/Putin meeting.
The fourth article covers Papadopoulos’ interactions with a man suspected of having ties to Russian intelligence and his last days on the campaign.
The fifth article covers Carter Page’s background in Russia and his ties to Russian foreign intelligence, the FBI, and the CIA.
This article is an excerpt from my book, While We Slept: Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and the Corruption of American Democracy, available here.
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —
Towards the end of 2015, Carter Page began his efforts to get in contact with the Trump campaign. In order to do so, he reached out to Ed Cox, Richard Nixon’s son-in-law and the chairman of the New York Republican Party.
In a curious coincidence, Cox sits on the board of Noble Energy, the Houston-based energy company with close links to the Hudson Institute and whose offshore drilling interests in exploiting the Leviathan natural gas field off Israel were supported by George Papadopoulos’ written work and advocacy at Hudson.
Cox was a longtime foe of Hillary Clinton’s who had considered but ultimately decided against challenging her New York Senate seat in 2005.
Three years later he met Carter Page while both were volunteering on the McCain campaign.
In his capacity as head of the New York Republican Party, Cox had interacted with Trump extensively in 2013 when the latter was considering, and ultimately decided against, running against Andrew Cuomo to become the Governor of New York.
“[I’m] cautiously optimistic that the next administration might finally offer a change in direction in US-Russia relations,” Page wrote to Cox on December 31st, 2015, stating further that “recent statements by Trump give me renewed hope.”
He then asked Cox if he could provide him with any insights “as to how one might be able to support [Trump], including by becoming one of his delegates.”
Included in his email was a paper Page had written titled “Trump, Putin and the Possible End of the Second Cold War.’’
In it he wrote, “Trump’s stance toward Russia reflects optimism for a fresh approach, and this could serve as an important legacy of his candidacy.”
Cox forwarded Page’s email, along with the attached article, to Corey Lewandowski the next day. Lewandowski responded on January 2nd, 2016, that he was “happy to meet anytime” with Page and a meeting set up to occur on January 12th at Trump Tower.
That day, Page met with Lewandowski, Sam Clovis and Trump campaign political director Michael Glassner.
Clovis later recalled that when he arrived at the meeting Lewandowski told him, “[t]his is Carter Page; get to know him; he wants to help.”
Judging from subsequent communications between Page and Clovis, in addition to Page’s professional background, it appears that they discussed Russia during their first meeting. After the meeting, Page sent Clovis and Glassner a thank you email that had included the attachment he had initially sent to Cox.
At this point, Page appears to have begun volunteering with the Trump campaign on an informal, unpaid basis.
“Following up on our discussions about Russia earlier this month,” Page subsequently wrote to Clovis, Glassner and Lewadowski in a January 30th email with the subject line J.P. Morgan Securities: GAZPROM INVESTOR DAY, “I wanted to share with you a few thoughts and suggestions about some massive additional potential upside for the campaign. I spent the past week in Europe and have been in discussions with some individuals with close ties to the Kremlin.”
“The possible game-changing effect,” Page continued, “which Mr. Trump could have in bringing the end of the new Cold War that Obama and George W Bush managed to create in recent years has literally brought a new exceptionally high level of optimism in Moscow and across the country. Given the essential strategic position that Russia has in the world as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, etc., the effect of Mr. Trump could be nothing short of monumental. Through my discussions with these high level contacts, it is their belief that a direct meeting in Moscow between Mr Trump and President Putin could be arranged.”
“[T]he unnecessary negative impact of the U.S. government’s failed sanctions policy,” Page wrote in the final paragraph on the email, “has severely hindered the development of Gazprom in recent years with potential catastrophic consequences for the people of Russia. They too are eagerly awaiting the massive changes which Mr. Trump has readily positioned himself to soon bring.”
Eight days later, on February 7th, Page emailed Clovis, Glassner and Lewandowski again, noting that Forbes had just selected Vladimir Putin as it’s most powerful world leader.
“As I have alluded to before,” Page wrote, “there is no question that a Trump visit to Moscow and related meetings with Putin would prove to be the most important campaign event in the history of U.S. politics.”
On February 17th, Page reached out to Clovis, Glassner and Lewandowski yet again, letting them know that he had heard Trump was putting together a foreign policy advisory team.
Page attached his bio and wrote to “express my interest in contributing as a member of that team. Although I have little to gain from this personally, I’m committed to supporting Mr. Trump’s efforts to make America great again.”
Clovis replied the next day asking Page to call him to receive additional information.
Page, Russian Foreign Intelligence, and a Potential FBI Counterintelligence Investigation
Less than two weeks later on March 2nd, in the midst of his outreach to the Trump campaign, Page was interviewed by a Counterintelligence Agent from the FBI’s New York Field Office (NYFO), as well as by Assistant United States Attorneys from the SDNY who were preparing for their upcoming trial of SVR Agent Evgeny Buryakov (Podobnyy and Sporyshev used diplomatic immunity to flee the United States before they could be detained).
During the interview, Page explained that he was aware that he was the “Male-1” mentioned in court documents describing Podobnyy’s efforts at recruiting sources.
He further told the investigators that he had also told this to Russian diplomatic officials at an event sponsored by the United Nations.
Following the interview, the NYFO agent discussed opening a counterintelligence investigation into Page with her supervisor as a result of learning that Page had informed Russian officials of his identity as “Male-1.”
Following this discussion, the supervisor reached out to the Counterespionage section at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, to see if Page held any security clearances and to inquire as to what type of investigation they should open up into him.
The NYFO Counterintelligence Supervisor later stated that, given Page’s previous known contacts with Russian intelligence, she believed that she should have opened up a counterintelligence investigation into Page prior to the March 2nd interview.
Her squad, however, had been too busy at the time working on the upcoming trial of Buryakov (as well Podobnyy and Sporyshev in absentia).
Page and the Trump Campaign, Contd.
Despite his involvement in an espionage trial in Manhattan, Page continued to pursue a position on the Trump campaign.
On March 17th, Page emailed Clovis again. The day before, the Trump campaign had released a short video on Instagram that featured Vladimir Putin laughing at Hillary Clinton followed by the message: “We don’t need to be a punchline! Make America Great Again!”
The next day Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov issued a statement. “It’s an open secret for us that demonizing Russia and whatever is linked to Russia is unfortunately a mandatory hallmark of America’s election campaign.”
“I know people who work closely with the [spokesman] from the Kremlin,” Page wrote to Clovis following the incident. “Perhaps the more relevant responses to yesterday’s Instagram video were many of the amazing comments written in Russian. Clearly there’s an extraordinary level of excitement from the people of that country regarding the new potential for relations between our 2 global powerhouses. Make the World Great Again.”
In addition to addressing the Instagram affair, Page shared with Clovis several documents that he appears to have created on his own volition and referred to as the “President’s Daily Brief” and the “Candidates Daily Briefing.”
Much of the content focus of these documents, presented in bullet point format, pertained to Russia.
Putin, according to Page’s analysis, had won in Syria, and he suggested that Russian forces played a stabilizing role in the war torn country, whereas he portrayed U.S. efforts in Syria as “meddling.”
Page also criticized NATO and its strategy of deterring Russia, discussed events in Ukraine and advocated for closer relations between the highest levels of leadership in Moscow and Washington.
Four days later, at the March 21st interview with The Washington Post, Trump announced to the world that “Carter Page, PhD” was a member of his foreign policy advisory team.
Following the announcement, Page later reported that his inbox filled up positive messages from his many Russian contacts.
“So many people who I know and have worked with have been so adversely affected by the sanctions policy,” Page told Bloomberg shortly after the announcement had been made. “There’s a lot of excitement in terms of the possibilities for creating a better situation.”
“Can you please send me the best telephone number for each of the members of our national foreign policy team?” Ivanka Trump wrote to Sam Clovis the day after the announcement. “My father would like to reach out to them today.”
“Gentleman,” Clovis wrote to Page and the other advisers. “Expect a call today at some point. I was asked for your numbers this morning. Given the events of the day, expect to be asked some questions about what we need to be doing about the unfolding events.”
Page appears to have prepared and waited for the call but it never came.
The Ivanka Trump contact information request notwithstanding, there is no evidence to date that Page ever met or spoke with Trump. Ivanka Trump was, however, in possession of his personal contact information, so in theory Trump had access to it as well.
Following the announcement on the 21st, the media quickly began looking into his Russia contacts. Page emailed Clovis the day after the announcement, asking about media queries regarding his position on the campaign and background in Russia.
Page was not present during the March 31st meeting of the Trump foreign policy advisors in Washington, DC, as was travelling at the time for what he later described as a meeting with “top U.S. military commanders many thousands of miles away from Washington.”
The identity of these “top U.S. military commanders” and why they would meet with Page, if indeed such a meeting actually took place, is unknown.
The next day, April 1st, the FBI Counterespionage Section in Washington, DC contacted the New York Field Office Supervisor who had inquired a month earlier about opening up an investigation into Page and instructed her to do so.
This is not to be confused with the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation into the Trump campaign’s links with Russia, which was a separate investigation opened at a later date.
Five days later, on April 6th, the NYFO officially opened a counterintelligence investigation into Page, attempting to see if he would be contacted by any more foreign intelligence officers.
Carter Page Discusses a Potential Trip to Moscow with the Trump Campaign
Over the course of April, Page provided input for Trump’s major foreign policy address at the Mayflower Hotel.
By the end of the month, a series of events began that ultimately led to Page receiving an invitation to speak at a Moscow university, a speech that would eventually turn his life, and American politics in general, upside down.
On April 25th, Page was contacted by an old acquaintance of his from his days in Moscow, Andrej Krickovic.
A professor at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, Krickovic had been an intern at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow when he first met Page while the latter was working at Merrill Lynch. Both had a mutual acquaintance in a Defense Attache stationed at the Embassy.
The Higher School of Economics offers a Joint Bachelor of Economics Program with another prestigious Moscow institution of higher education, the New Economic School (NES).
Krickovic learned from an HSE colleague and co-author of his, Yuval Weber, that Shlomo Weber, Yuval’s father and the Rector of NES, was looking for speakers for the NES’s 2016 commencement ceremony.
Shlomo had been born in the Soviet Union and, after immigrating to Israel, moved to the United States for an academic career before returning to Russia and taking his place as rector of NES.
Upon learning that Shlomo was looking for commencement speakers from his son Yuval, Krickovic put Shlomo in contact with Page.
Shlomo later told the FBI that his invitation to Page was partially a public relation stunt as “there was incredible interest in Moscow related to the Donald J. Trump presidential campaign.”
“It’s been a while since we last talked. I’ve been following the news and did not have [a] chance to congratulate you on your new appointment. Great news!” Krickovic wrote to Page on April 25th, 2016, in an email with the subject line Introducing Shlomo Weber.
“The reason I’m writing you is to introduce Professor Shlomo Weber… He is interested in engaging with the Trump campaign on Russia issues. I don’t know Shlomo personally; but I am very good friends with Yuval Weber, his son… Yuval reached out to me to make the introduction to you. Do you still have the time to come to Russia these days? We’d love for you to give a talk on US Russia relations, and your thoughts about how they could change under a Trump presidency.”
Page was initially cautious, replying that he did want to publicly discuss Trump’s foreign policy before it had been officially formed. In reference to Trump’s upcoming foreign policy speech at the Mayflower Hotel, which Page had been providing input for, he wrote that it would “not give extensive details of the kind that you’ve envisioned for such a talk.”
He also mentioned the negative press he had been receiving about his Russia contacts. “So suffice to say, I need to be careful.”
Krickovic replied that he appreciated Page’s “reluctance to speak publicly… Perhaps after Mr. Trump wins and you are head of the Russia desk at State you can come and give a talk to our faculty.”
Krickovic asked Page to let him know when he would next be in Moscow.
“Thank you for your interest and the willingness to meet with me,” Shlomo Weber replied the next day. “I look forward to getting together in Moscow next time you are there or otherwise connecting over the phone or video. Allow me to add that I am a Russian-born US citizen and staunch Republican… I would be very happy to contribute my expertise on foreign and economic affairs… to a successful Republican presidential candidate.”
Page replied that he hadn’t finalized his plans to travel to Moscow but he would be in touch when he had.
The next day, April 27th, Trump’s Mayflower foreign policy speech took place while Page was traveling through Dubai.
Roughly a week later, on May 3rd, Shlomo Weber reached out to Page again. “I understand that those are early days and I realize that you have multiple connections in Moscow,” Weber wrote. “I just would like to let you know that NES would be happy to host you.”
Page responded by asking if NES would cover his travel and accommodation, and noting that he needed to be careful because he was being watched closely by the media and wanted to avoid any perception of conflicts of interest.
Despite these concerns, Page reached out to Trump campaign Director of National Security J.D. Gordon on May 9th.
First he provided a list of ten media inquiries in which he made no other comment other than to confirm that he was an advisor to the Trump campaign.
Page further informed Gordon that he had received invitations “speaking engagements in Russia and the Middle East,” and asked to be provided the proper campaign forms to seek approval for such speaking events.
In this email to Gordon, instead of mentioning Shlomo Weber, Page wrote that he had received a speaking invitation from a “close advisor of President Putin,” Sergey Karaganov.
Why exactly he did so, and if Karaganov ever actually independently reached out to Page, is unclear.
In his initial April 25th email chain introducing Page to Weber, Krickovic had ended his correspondence by writing: “Perhaps we can even arrange a private meeting with our dean, Sergey Karaganov. As you know he has quite some influence in high places here. It would be really good to get a dialogue going.”
In addition to serving as the Dean of Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, Krickovic was correct in his description of Sergey Karaganov having “influence in high places.”
In 1992 Karaganov, a Russian nationalist intellectual, gave a highly influential speech in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union in which he laid out what came to be known as the “Karaganov Doctrine.”
The doctrine proved highly influential with Putin and those who thought like him.
In the speech, Karaganov argued that instead of seeing the fact that the collapse of the Soviet Union had left millions of Russia speakers outside of Russia’s borders as irretrievably lost, they should be seen as a means to cultivate Russian influence over former Soviet satellite states.
“We must be enterprising and take them under our control,” Karaganov proposed in the speech, “in this way establishing a powerful political enclave that will be the foundation of our political influence.”
By the time Putin came into power, Karaganov was known not only to be close to the new President himself, but also to powerful individuals within the Russian foreign policy establishment including Yevgeny Primakov, a former KGB and then SVR intelligence chief, and Russian Deputy Prime Minister, Sergei Prikhodko.
Prikhodko, as mentioned earlier, invited Trump to St. Petersburg in December of 2015 and later in August of 2016 was present with Oleg Deripaska and Nastya Rybka on their Norwegian yachting excursion, where Rybka later alleged Paul Manafort and the 2016 election was discussed.
Read my description of Deripaska, Prikhodko, and Rybka’s interactions here.
Karaganov has served as the Chairman on the Valdai Discussion Club, which featured Joseph Mifsud as a speaker, since 2004.
He also sits on the board of the Russian International Affairs Committee (RIAC), alongside Ivan Timofeev.
As mentioned in an earlier entry to this series, Mifsud and Timofeev both interacted extensively with Trump foreign policy advisor George Papadapoulos.
“Russia is far stronger, and the west far weaker, than many imagine,” Karaganov wrote as late as 2014. “The west that Russia now faces is not the self confident alliance that proclaimed itself the victor in the Cold War. It is a directionless gaggle, beset with economic insecurities and losing sight of its moral convictions. America and it’s alles once held the future in their hands, but at the beginning of this Asian century they let it slip through their fingers. Their crowning accomplishment was globalisation — and they are destroying it, with economic sanctions they incoherently describe as instruments of self-defense.”
The nature of Page’s relationship with Karaganov is unclear. Krickovic’s email offers to introduce Page to Karaganov. Page, however, later told the Senate Intelligence Committee that he had met Karaganov in the late 1990s and again when he lived in Moscow and worked for Merrill Lynch.
Page never provided a clear explanation as to why he suggested to J.D. Gordon that Karaganov had invited him, other than to mention his affiliation with a Russian university.
Gordon replied, providing Page with the requested documents and writing, “If we had ten Carter Pages… imagine what we could do!”
He also warned Page that, because of the lingering uproar following George Papadopoulos’s interview with The Times of London, members of the foreign advisory team were “keeping a very low profile right now.”
“I talked with several people here and we would like to invite you to NES,” Weber wrote to Page on May 12th.
In the typical course of events, the decision to invite Page would have likely been made by a committee of five or six people, including Weber, a provost and someone from the school’s finance department.
Weber later told the FBI that nobody from the Russian government asked him to invite Page.
“You can give a talk here,” Weber wrote to Page, “and, possibly, in some other places. We will cover your travel and accommodation expenses. One of the options could be our graduation ceremony on July 8.”
“That sounds great Shlomo,” Page replied that day. “Please note that we have some internal procedures for the campaign so I will need to get approval.”
Weber later told the Senate Intelligence Committee: “There was some interest to see, to learn a little bit more about [Trump] and his potential policy towards Russia was tremendous, so that’s what we thought, if somebody is working on his campaign, it could be of interest to Russia, for students, for [the] general public . … I thought that at this time that the campaign of then-candidate Trump was really lacking in expertise about foreign policy, and particularly about Russia. And I just thought that maybe we informing the campaign about the Russian issues will be a good thing to do.”
On May 16th, Page sent an email to Sam Clovis, J.D. Gordon and Walid Phares that included a link to a 2009 NES commencement address given by then-President Barack Obama. He further proposed that candidate Trump should take his place and speak in his stead at the Moscow event. There does not seem to be any initial campaign response to Page’s suggestion that Trump travel to Moscow, at least not publicly available.
On May 18th, Page submitted a speech request form to J.D. Gordon. Gordon later testified before the House Intelligence Committee that he told Page the trip would be a bad idea.
There is, however, no contemporaneous evidence that Gordon did so.
As May turned to June, Page’s staunchly pro-Russian stances and statements continued.
Early that month, he attended a gathering of foreign policy experts at Blair House in Washington, DC for a meeting in Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and stirred disbelief when he made an off-topic statement effusively praising Vladimir Putin as stronger and more reliable than President Obama and claiming that a Trump presidency would lead to improved U.S.-Russia relations.
Such incidents were not going unnoticed by the press and subsequently by members of the Trump team.
On June 11th, J.D. Gordon sent an email with the subject line Carter Page, Gazprom & Media Engagement to Rick Dearborn and John Mashburn. In it he claimed that while helpful, Page was often “difficult to manage” when it came to the press.
Gordon highlighted a recent piece written in the conservative National Review that referred to Page as an “out-and-out Putinite” and further described him as being “tight with the Kremlin’s foreign-policy apparatus and has served as a vehement propagandist for it.”
That same day, Page sent Hope Hicks a set of draft responses to a series of questions posed to him by investigative reporter Tom Hamburger from The Washington Post. Most of Hamburger’s queries related to the nature of Page’s role on the campaign and his stances on Russia policy. Page forwarded the email to Stephen Miller and Corey Lewandowski.”
Can you please advise?” Hicks wrote. “I don’t know Carter well or the extent of his involvement.”
On June 14th, The Washington Post broke the story that the DNC had been hacked and that the suspected culprit was the Russian government.
Despite the fact that the article was not written by Tom Hamburger, Page emailed J.D. Gordon and Hope Hicks and cast doubt on the suggestion of Russian involvement. “Looks like Tom & Co concocted another fairytale instead of the original inaccurate attack job against DJT, me and my firm … at least so far.”
“I am resending this Campaign Advisor Speaker Request Form which I submitted over a month ago,” Page wrote to Gordon, Hick, Lewandowksi and Clovis on June 19th.
“I’m literally saying nothing about the campaign so I don’t think this administrative procedure is relevant in this case. But please let me know as soon as possible in case anyone might have any reservations.”
Page continued, “[a]s I had also previously suggested, I’m sure they would love to have Mr. Trump speak at this annual celebration.”
He finished by mentioning that “Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich is a board member and a graduate who will likely be in attendance.”
“Carter — If you want to do this, it would be out side [sic] of your role with the DJT for President campaign,” Lewandowski replied on the same day, which happened to be his last on the Trump campaign before he was fired. “I am certain Mr. Trump will not be able to attend.”
In late June, days before his scheduled departure for Moscow, Page attended a dinner meeting of the Trump foreign policy advisors at the Republican-associated Capitol Hill Club in Washington, DC.
Page later recalled that George Papadopoulos and Jeff Sessions were present at the meeting.
In testimony before the House, Page recalled that he mentioned his trip to Moscow to Sessions. According to Page, the Moscow trip was mentioned as an aside and Sessions had no visible response to the news.
Carter Page Delivers a Speech in Moscow
Page arrived in Moscow on July 4th, 2016. Early in the trip, Page joined Shlomo Weber, Krickovic and several others for dinner. Weber arrived at the dinner two hours late and was later unable to remember with any specificity the content of the discussions that took place.
Weber did recall that Page continually spoke about “Igor Ivanovich, Igor Ivanovich, Igor Ivanovich,” which was how he referred to Rosneft CEO and former-KGB agent Igor Sechin.
While Weber noted that Page spoke about Sechin a great deal, Weber claimed that Page gave no indication that he had a relationship with Sechin or that the two had any plans to meet.
On July 5th, Page emailed Weber and asked him to remove any mention of his involvement with the Trump campaign from the webpage announcing his role in the commencement.
Despite this request, Page continually gave the impression that he was an adviser to Donald Trump and, according to Weber, “[n]obody ever doubted” that Page worked for the Trump campaign.
Prior to Page’s speech, Weber claimed that he wasn’t sure whether Page wanted to be introduced as a Trump campaign adviser or not.
The next day, July 6th, Denis Klimentov, who would become an official NES spokesman in the Fall but was already working with the school by the time of Page’s July trip to Moscow, emailed the Director of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Information and Press Department, Maria Zakharova, informing her that he desired to bring Page’s presence in Moscow to the attention of the Russian government.
“Page is Trump’s adviser on foreign policy,” Klimentov wrote to Zakharova. “He is a known businessman; he used to work in Russia… If you have any questions, I will be happy to help contact him.”
Klimentov then contacted Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov to see if he had any interest in introducing Page to Russian government officials.
Read my description of Peskov’s involvement in the negotiations for a potential Trump Tower Moscow here.
Denis Klimentov copied his brother, Dmitry Klimentov, on his communications. Dmitry Klimentov is a U.S.-based public relations expert and former head of the Russian state-owned media outlet RIA Novosti’s New York Bureau who is known to be in regular contact with Peskov.
“I have read about [Page],” Peskov replied the next day. “Specialists say that he is far from being the main one. So I better not initiate a meeting in the Kremlin.”
On the evening of the 6th, Page attended a J.P. Morgan social event to watch a European Cup match and met there with a friend from his days in Moscow named Andrey Baranov.
Baranov had once worked for Gazprom but was then the Head of Investor Relations for Rosneft. Page later told the FBI that he and Baranov discussed “immaterial non-public information,” curiously using the same language he used to describe his previous interactions with Russian intelligence agents.
Page claimed that he and Baranov discussed Igor Sechin in passing and recalled that Baranov may have made a brief mention of the possible upcoming sale of a stake in Rosneft.
On July 7th, Page delivered his first of two scheduled speeches before the NES. The presentation was titled: The Evolution of the World Economy: Trends and Potential.
He used to opportunity to critique America’s policy vis-a-vis Russia, stating that “Washington and other Western capitals have impeded potential progress through their often hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratization, inequality, corruption and regime change.”
Shlomo Weber later claimed that NES students were disappointed by Page’s speech and that nobody at the time believed that Trump would win the election.
Krickovic claimed that Page embarrassed him by filling his speech with propaganda as opposed to fact.
Promotion of Page’s NES Speech by Russian Nationalists with Connections to Russian Intelligence
Page’s July 7th speech was attended and promoted by a number of infamous Russian nationalists, some of whom with connections to the Russian government and intelligence services.
Maria Katasonova, at the time a notorious and beautiful 21-year-old Russian nationalist, attended the event and asked Page a question regarding Trump and U.S.-Russian relations.
Katasonova was at the time running to represent a Russian ultra-nationalist party in the State Duma and was known for her ardent support of Putin, French right wing politician Marine Le Pen and Donald Trump, in addition to publicly bashing Hillary Clinton.
Katasonova often expressed her political views through PR stunts such as protesting in front of the American Embassy in Moscow and releasing white doves in favor of Trump, all of which was dutifully promoted through her sizable social media presence.
Page’s speech was also promoted by the Eurasianist and neo-fascist Aleksandr Dugin via his now deleted Twitter account.
As described an earlier entry, Dugin is affiliated with the sanctioned billionaire Konstantin Malofyev’s Tsargrad nationalist television station. Tsargrad was one of the few stations to fully cover Page’s trip to Russia before, during and after his speech at the NES. Tsargrad is affiliated with the Russian nationalist think tank KATEHON, which features both Malofyev and Dugin on its board.
Following Page’s speech, an article covering it from KATEHON read as follows: “After the reunification of Crimea with Russia and the beginning of operations in Ukraine, he was one of the few American experts who called for understanding the actions of Russia. Page came out openly against the interventionist policy of NATO, which, in his opinion, provoked Russia with its expansion.”
Another ardent Russian nationalist and notorious internet troll whose activities often dovetail with Russian government and intelligence operations, Konstantin Rykov, published a Facebook post on July 7th in which he praised Page’s speech.
Rykov, who has been referred to as Russia’s “chief troll” and is often seen as an early adopter of memes, conspiracy theories and social media disinformation, began receiving Russian government support as far back as 2003 and at first focused his online propaganda on the Russian domestic audience.
He is a friend of, and collaborates with, Timur Prokopenko, the manager of the Kremlin’s media influence activities between 2012–2014. Prokopenko requested that the Kremlin finance Rykov’s online presence. Eventually Rykov’s efforts turned to international targets, including the United States and its allies.
In 2014, Rykov was involved in an influence operation targeting France and supporting Marine Le Pen. Texts between Rykov and Prokopenko leaked by the hacking group Anonymous International indicate that Rykov may have been in contact with Le Pen, or somebody close to her, at the time of the Russian influence campaign.
Rykov was also an avid “supporter” of Scottish independence from the United Kingdom.
According to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Rykov is also known to have ties to numerous members of the Russian intelligence services as well as nationalist political parties.
Rykov is an associate of Leonid Reshetnikov, a veteran Russian foreign intelligence official, who as recently as 2019 was banned from Bulgaria for ten years due to his clandestine activities. These activities include attempting to sway Bulgarian elections in favor of a pro-Kremlin party.
Reshetnikov sits on the board of KATEHON alongside Malofyev, Dugin and Sergey Glazyev, a close advisor to Putin.
Starting in 2009, Reshetnikov became the director of the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies (RISS).
In 2017, three current and four former U.S. officials told Reuters that the RISS had developed a plan to swing the 2016 election in Donald Trump’s favor and undermine American voters’ faith in the democratic system.
They described two RISS internal documents that, while they did not mention the cyber attack hack-and-release element of Russian active measures in 2016, provided a framework and rationale for a Russian influence operation targeting the 2016 election.
Other Russian notable figures mentioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee as having links to Rykov include Alexey Kondratyev, a Russian Senator and Colonel in the GRU.
Aleksey Zhuralyov, another Rykov associate, is the head of the Russian ultra-nationalst party Rodina.
Another is German Klimenko, an advisor to Putin who served as an intermediary between Russian government officials and the country’s internet industry.
Lastly, the Committee mentions Rykov’s links to Aleksey Chesnakov, a former Putin aide and assistant to the Russian political technologist Vladislav Surkov.
The section of the Senate Intelligence Report that mentions these links is heavily redacted, so it is unknown whether any of these individuals were involved in any way with the Russian influence operation in 2016.
Rykov is also a close associate of two Aras Agalarov employees, Artem Klyushin and his then-wife Yulya Klyushina, both of whom spent time with Donald Trump during the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow.
Both Klyushin and Rykov were centrally involved in Kremlin-backed efforts to flood Ukrainian social media with pro-Russian propaganda in 2014.
Following Trump’s announcement to run for President, Rykov’s pro-Kremlin website Vzglyad contacted Hope Hicks attempting to arrange an interview with Trump that never came to fruition.
In August of 2015, Rykov, who already owned the official domain for Putin’s 2018 re-election campaign putin2018.ru as well as marinelepen.ru, registered trump2016.ru, which he used as a content aggregator.
Rykov organized numerous pro-Trump events in Russia around the 2016 election, some of which were attended by both Maria Katasonova and Artem Klyushin.
Another attendee at these events included Anton Korobkov-Zemlyanskiy, a pro-Kremlin bot developer and social media operative who had worked with Rykov and Klyushin in their efforts in Ukraine and was known to have targeted the United States in the past.
Jack Hanick, a former Fox News producer and director of Sean Hannity’s program who worked for Malofyev’s Tsargrad television station, also attended Rykov’s election events.
In 2022, Hanick was indicted by the US Department of Justice for violating sanctions related to the Russian invasion of Crimea by working for Konstantin Malofyev.
Rykov claimed to be in direct contact with Donald Trump via Twitter in 2012, however this claim has been disputed and is in doubt.
Shortly after Trump’s victory, he wrote a series of unverified Facebook posts in which he claimed that during the 2012 Presidential Debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama he and several others had a “crazy idea” to “digitize all types of modern man” and “change their perception of reality” in order to elect Donald Trump as President of the united States.
In order to do so, he claimed that Trump himself hired a “special scientific department of Cambridge University.”
Rykov then explicitly referred to Cambridge Analytica, the political consulting and data analytics firm co-founded by Steve Bannon and utilized by the Trump campaign in the 2016 election.
It is important to note that, despite the remarkable amount of attention Page’s July 7th speech in Moscow garnered from suspicious individuals and organizations, there is no evidence that Page was contemporaneously aware of it or knew any of the individuals mentioned above.
Carter Page’s Trip to Moscow, Cont’d
“I wanted to give you a quick heads up about a few developments during my Moscow trip,” Page wrote in an email to J.D. Gordon, Hope Hicks and Sam Clovis on July 7th.
“I have been doing everything possible to keep a low profile… and to the extent people do learn I’m here, ensuring they all understand that my visit is outside of my role with the campaign. But given the vast outpouring of support for Mr. Trump and the strong social network in Russia, a few journalists caught wind of my presence in Russia and have been following my every move closely. As always, I have been avoiding any media interview until otherwise instructed.”
“FYI,” Gordon wrote, forwarding Page’s email to John Mashburn and Tera Dahl, a former Breitbart writer and Steve Bannon ally then on the Trump campaign. “We probably ought to print this out for our files.”
On July 8th, Page delivered his second speech in Moscow at the NES commencement ceremony, though he was not the keynote speaker.
One of the main speakers at the event was Russian Deputy Prime Minister and head of the NES board, Arkady Dvorkovich.
During his speech, Dvorkovich claimed the sanctions imposed by the U.S. had harmed the New Economic School.
At some point during the ceremony, Page met and greeted Dvorkovich and the two spoke briefly.
While Page would later maintain their interaction only lasted a few seconds, Weber recalled that they spoke for several minutes.
Dvorkovich reportedly mentioned working together with Page in the future.
The two later had a private dinner together when Page returned to Moscow in December of 2016.
In its report, the Senate Intelligence Committee wrote it had “counterintelligence concerns” about Dvorkovich.
He is known to be close to the former Russian president Dmitri Medvedev.
While Dvorkovich was initially seen as a liberal when compared to Putinists like his one-time rival Igor Sechin, upon Putin’s return to the presidency he was able to adapt and maintain his position in the Russian power structure.
In November of 2016, the Russian newspaper Vedomosti claimed that Dvorkovich had been under surveillance by Russian domestic intelligence agencies on suspicion of graft.
In 2018, he became the chairman of the Skolkovo Foundation, a Russian organization dedicated to the development and commercialization of technology.
Four years earlier, the FBI’s boston office had issued a warning that the Skolkovo Foundation may be a means by which the Russian government stole vital American technology.
The president of Skolkovo, Viktor Vekselberg, would also be investigated for his ties to individuals related to Donald Trump’s inner circle. Dvorkovich was later sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department.
Vladimir Putin later supported Dvorkovich’s candidacy for the presidency of Fide, the World Chess Federation.
As chess occupies an important part of Russian culture and sense of national pride, exerting influence over Fide has been attempted since Soviet times, when the organization was penetrated by the KGB.
Fide’s previous president, a Russian oligarch named Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, was forced to step down after being sanctioned by the U.S. for supporting the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. Experts believe that Ilyumzhinov’s activities at Fide were conducted with some degree of coordination with the Russian security services.
Through a coordinated global effort by Russian statesmen, businessmen and bankers, Dvorkovich’s candidacy was successful.
Members of the Russian Chess Federation board of trustees, which supported Dvorkvich’s candidacy, include Putin’s old Judo partner Gennady Timchenko as well as a Russian minister of defense, the chairman and chief executive of Gazprom Neft and the mayor of Moscow.
“I’ll send you guys a readout soon regarding some incredible insights and outreach I’ve received from a few Russian legislators and senior members of the Presidential Administration here,” Page wrote again to J.D. Gordon and Tera Dahl on the 8th.
“Suffice to say that after watching their national economy and relationships with Europe get derailed by Washington mismanagement with disastrous consequences over recent years, Russians from the highest levels of government to the average man on the street have a new optimism and hope for the future based on Mr. Trump’s common sense statements about his foreign policy approaches over the past year.”
Later that day, Page sent Gordon, Dahl and Walid Phares another email with the subject Feedback from Russia — Executive Summary and an attached document with the same name.
The first bullet point on the document read as follows:
“Russian Deputy Prime Minister and NES Board Member Arkady Dvorkovich also spoke, before the event. In a private conversation, Dvorkovich expressed strong support for Mr. Trump and a desire to work together toward devising better solutions in response to the vast range of current international problems. Based on feedback from a diverse array of sources close to the Russian Presidential Administration, it was readily apparent that this sentiment is widely held at all levels of the government.”
Carter Page was in Moscow from July 4th to July 9th.
While much of his time there has been accounted for, later investigators would also let it be known that due to Page’s own vague and occasionally contradictory testimony, and the inability to compel testimony from a number of key individuals in Russia, there remain unanswered questions as to what Carter Page did while he was in Moscow, as well as who he met with and what they spoke about.
These questions are pertinent given his own descriptions, which he provided to members of the Trump campaign, of speaking with Russian legislators and senior members of the Presidential administration.
In a later interview with the FBI, Yuval Weber claimed that there were rumors floating around Moscow while Page was in town that he had met with Igor Sechin.
After Moscow: Additional Foreign Travel and Carter Page’s Final Days on the Trump Campaign
Upon his return to the United States, Page attended the Republican National Convention. On the evening of July 20th, he and J.D. Gordon attended a networking reception held by the law firm Jones Day and sat at a table alongside Sergey Kislyak, then the Russian Ambassador to the United States.
They were joined by the Ambassadors to Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. While munching on chicken satays, Gordon suggested to Kislyak that the U.S. should have better relations with Russia.
At another point during the convention, Page met with the Hungarian Ambassador to the United States, Reka Szemerkényi. The two discussed foreign policy matters and kept in touch after the convention, eventually leading to Page traveling to Hungary later in the Fall.
Shortly after the convention, the media began contacting Page with inquiries about his trip to Moscow.
On July 26th, The Wall Street Journal contacted him and asked him if he had met Igor Sechin in Moscow.
Two days later, Page emailed Hope Hicks, copying Sam Clovis and J.D. Gordon, saying that he had been contacted by a “barrage of reporters over recent days.”
He promised to “continue avoiding all interview requests” but offered the campaign “help in the media department.”
“Who can weigh in here?” Hicks wrote to Stephen Miller, forwarding Page’s email.
“[N]one of our FP guys should be doing any interviews on [R]ussia right now.” Miller replied.
Russia was a hot item in the news at that moment. Five days earlier, Wikileaks had just dropped its cache of stolen DNC emails.
The day before, Trump had made his infamous statement at a press conference asking for Russia to find Hillary’s “missing” emails.
“Agreed!!!” Hicks replied.
In early August, internal concern within the Trump campaign seemed to grow after Page accepted an interview request without first getting permission from the campaign. As a result, Hope Hicks reached out to Stephen Miller, Rick Dearborn and Trump campaign senior advisor Jason Miller, looking for someone to speak with Page about the interview.
“We need to stop this,” Miller replied.
“I do not know Carter,” Hicks wrote to Miller. “He’s sent me a few emails, but I think someone with authority should remind him he does not speak for the campaign, or Mr. Trump and we strongly advise against this (all via phone).”
It is unclear whether anybody on the Trump campaign delivered this message to Page, or why Hope Hicks suggested the message be delivered “all via phone.”
Three days later, Steve Mufson and Tom Hamburger from The Washington Post published an article describing the unease Page’s trip to Moscow and the statements he made while there had stirred on both American political parties.
In the aftermath, the Trump team immediately distanced itself from Page. In the article, Hope Hicks described Page as an “informal foreign policy adviser” who “does not speak for Mr. Trump or the campaign.”
Despite the bad press, Page remained on the foreign policy advisory committee.
J.D. Gordon, on the other hand, left the campaign on August 10th after never receiving any pay.
While Page wasn’t officially let go, he does appear to have significantly slowed down his activities and reduced known contact with the Trump campaign during this period.
Over the Labor Day weekend in early September, following up on his meeting with Ambassador Szemerkényi at the RNC, Page traveled to Budapest, Hungary.
Page later claimed that he traveled to Hungary to pursue a renewable energy project related to geothermal springs. During the trip he met with senior Hungarian government officials, including a 45-minute meeting with Jenő Megyesy, a close adviser to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Orbán is known to be one of the most vocal supporters of Vladimir Putin among all of the national leaders in the European Union.
Page also met again with Szemerkényi, who was back from her post in Washington at the time.
Later, under questioning by the House Intelligence Committee, Page claimed that he was unable to remember what members of the Hungarian government he had met with or what they had discussed.
When asked if he had met a Russian national during his trip, Page replied, “Not that I can recall. There may — again, similar to — we went to a — you know there was a hotel, and we had coffee at a hotel, and there were a few people passing through. There may have been one Russian person passing through there.”
In July of 2016, Hungarian President Viktor Orbán became one of the first world leaders to endorse Trump’s candidacy. Orbán is also infamous for his close relations with Putin.
It wasn’t always this way. When Orbán was elected as Hungarian Prime Minister in 1998 he was a pro-western reformer who criticized growing Russian influence.
His tune dramatically changed in 2009. Though unverified, the Russian independent press and the German independent journalist Jürgen Roth have reported that Semyon Mogilevich, who was based out of Budapest for many years, is reputed to have compromising material on Orbán.
Despite these claims, sources with Hungary describe both Szemerkényi and Megyesy as committed to the relationship with the United States.
Little is known about Page’s activities in Hungary. Anonymous sources speaking to the Hungarian press described Page “as a confused, uninformed, naive, but incredibly committed figure toward the Russians, who Moscow may use for his own benefit.”
On September 13th, Page emailed his fellow Trump foreign policy and national security advisors to let them know that he would be attending an event sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations that would be featuring then-Vice President Joe Biden.
Page suggested that he could ask Biden a question about his son Hunter Biden’s work for the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma. This issue, virtually unknown at the time, would became the center of a scandal that would later engulf the Trump presidency.
“Mentioning Biden’s children could backfire,” replied Bert Mizusawa, a fellow adviser.
“I agree with Bert,” replied Charles Kubic, yet another member of the team, “not sure you should use his son to bait him.”
The Burisma matter appears to have gone no further.
Ten days later, investigative reporter Michael Isikoff published a bombshell story in Yahoo News that revealed U.S. intelligence officials were looking into whether Page had opened up communications with senior Russian officials that included talks about rolling back U.S. sanctions.
Isikoff’s article further stated that “U.S. officials have since received intelligence reports that during that same three-day trip, Page met with Igor Sechin, a longtime Putin associate and former Russian deputy prime minister who is now the executive chairman of Rosneft, Russian’s leading oil company, a well-placed Western intelligence source tells Yahoo News.”
“We should say he’s not an advisor,” Stephen Miller wrote in one of a number of internal Trump campaign emails that were sent in the aftermath of the article. “[H]e’s never advised Mr. Trump, and has made no contribution to the campaign. Speaking for myself, I’ve never spoken to him, and wouldn’t recognize him if he were sitting next to me.”
“For the final time, we need to cut ties with Carter,” wrote Hope Hicks. “Please advise as to how we do this logistically and Jason [Miller] and I will strategize on not looking reactionary!”
Page sent an email to the campaign that day, proposing to put together a lengthy press statement beneath the official Trump campaign logo that would answer all of the questions raised by the explosive press report.
“Carter.- let’s talk in the morning,” Jason Miller replied within fifteen minutes. “I had a different direction in mind.”
The next day Carter Page was officially removed from the Trump campaign. The move to distance him from the campaign began almost immediately.
“He’s certainly not part of the campaign I’m running,” Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told CNN. “I have not spoken with him at all, in fact, meaning he’s not part of our national security or foreign policy briefings that we do now at all, certainly not since I have become campaign manager.”
Conway then emailed Hope Hicks with the following message: “Mr. Trump saw this segment and called me to say he has no idea who Carter Page is and wants to be sure he has never met him. May be best to check that he did not actually meet with him at any point and be sure Clovis, et. al [sic] remove Page’s name from materials, website.”
“He did meet with him one time in March at the old post office with a group of about 12 other people,” Hicks replied to Conway, incorrectly, as in fact Page had never met Trump. “They have never interacted or spoken since.”
“I wanted you to know,” Page wrote to Eric Trump early on the morning of September 26th, “that I have decided to take a leave of absence from my work on the campaign.”
Attached to the email was a letter dated on the 25th that Page said he intended to send to the then-head of the FBI James Comey.
In the letter to Comey, Page wrote that he was “writing to request the prompt end of the reported inquiry regarding my personal trip to Russia in July 2016.”
Page went on to describe the accusation against him as “completely false media reports.”
Page further stated that he hadn’t met with any sanctioned individuals in Russia and mentioned the fact that he had been in contact with the FBI and CIA over the years.
“I know nothing of this guy,” Eric Trump wrote to Hope Hicks, forwarding Page’s email. “Do you?”
“Know of him,” Hicks replied. “He was listed on an initial foreign policy adviser board Sam Clovis put together in the spring. He has never met or spoken to DJT or anyone on the campaign except Sam for that matter. It has now come to light he has ties to the Russian government so of course people are pushing it out as if he is the person whispering in DJT’s ear. Nonsense. Regardless, we requested he resign. I have no idea why he is directing that to you.”
Just as Hicks was mistaken when she told Kellyanne Conway that Page had met Trump once, she was mistaken in her statement to Eric Trump that Page had only met Clovis.
In fact, he had met with multiple of members of the Trump campaign and communicated with even more.
On the same day he emailed Eric Trump, Page gave an extensive interview to The Washington Post. Upon its publication, he forwarded it to multiple members of Trump campaign, writing, “now that I’ve finally begun to defend myself, we’re starting to quickly set the record straight for everyone.”
Page then asked if he could receive a copy of the Non-Disclosure Agreement he had signed with the campaign.
“Please make sure his NDA was in fact counter signed,” Hicks wrote to Sam Clovis. “Send him a copy and please ask him to stop talking. He is not being helpful. He has never spoken to or met Mr. Trump.”
And so ended Carter Page’s strange ride on the Trump campaign. He would visit Russia again in December, and his time in the public eye was only just beginning.
The next, and final article, in this series will cover Donald Trump’s foreign policy speech at the Mayflower Hotel and his campaign connections to a Russian national and foreign policy expert named Dimitri Simes.