Being Carter Page

The Trump campaign volunteer who became victim to one of the FBI's most outrageous crimes hasn't received so much as an apology

At the very beginning of the false Trump-Russia story, there was Carter Page.

We are approaching eight years since Page, a Trump campaign volunteer who’d never met or spoken to Donald Trump, was targeted in a scheme by the FBI and Trump’s enemies.

The scheme was to interfere in the 2016 election by convincing the public that Page and Trump were Russian stooges and spies.

As part of this scheme, Page was unlawfully surveilled by our intelligence agencies. They leaked his name and false allegations about him to the media in order to intervene in the election on behalf of Hillary Clinton; and to destroy Page’s reputation and, by proxy, to taint Trump.

Because of the latitude that our intelligence agencies have awarded themselves, they not only spy on secretly-targeted Americans, they have also granted themselves permission to spy on anyone who communicates with those targeted Americans, as well as people who communicated with those who communicated with the targeted Americans! No wiretap or court order necessary to surveil those in the extended categories…

That means if Trump’s enemies in government could find an excuse to spy on someone around Trump, it would be easy to ensnare Donald Trump’s communications in the secret dragnet. Trump’s opponents could monitor everything from his plans and campaign strategies, to his confidential communications with his attorneys and others.

By surveilling Trump in this way, through Carter Page, the FBI wouldn’t have to apply for a secret wiretap against Trump himself—an application likely to be scrutinized more carefully since it would have amounted to the Obama administration targeting a presidential candidate.

The unlawful nature of the spying on Page was exposed years after the fact. To this day, Page has been barred from getting justice in court by unreasonable protections afforded to government officials who commit violations, ethical lapses, and crimes—and he hasn’t even received so much as an apology from the offending government agents.

That could change in September.

Why wouldn’t the government repeat the same unlawful surveillance and election interference in 2024, when there was so little accountability after one of the most egregious abuses we can point to?

Read on for details.

A good beginning for the story of Carter Page is June 16, 2015.

In an interview about the whole debacle Page told me, “I think President Trump, then candidate Trump, from the moment he came down the escalator in the middle of 2015, had a great vision for the direction that the world should head and US's role in it. And I wanted to help out in any way that I can.”

Page decided to volunteer for the Trump campaign, eventually meeting with other volunteer advisers on foreign policy issues. But he says he had no idea that would put him at the nexus of the FBI’s Trump-Russia collusion theory.

ABC News was among those reporting the supposed scandal.

“We turn now to ABC investigation and Trump campaign adviser Carter Page,” blared one news report in 2016. It continued: “Russian spies tried to recruit him as an intelligence source!”

That wasn’t true.

Page served as a Naval officer in Europe and the Mideast with a brief stint in Navy intelligence. Earning two Masters degrees and a PhD, he became a successful investment adviser and worked in Russia from 2004-2007.

And there’s this surprising bit of background: he had a reportedly long history of assisting US intelligence agencies— prior to them deciding he was a Russian spy.

It was rumored that Page had assisted the FBI and CIA years ago in a case of corporate espionage in a Russian spy case. I asked him if that was true.

“I had alluded to the fact that I'd helped out CIA and FBI going back decades,” Page replied.

“How did that come about?” I asked.

“Going back to my years in the military, I had a lot of relationships,” he answered.

So the theory was, at the time, that a guy who had helped the FBI and CIA in the past, including with potential spy cases, himself became a spy while being actively watched by the FBI?

Page remarks, “It's just so outrageous, preposterous. Where do you even begin?”

Election Interference 101

Once Page got involved in the Trump campaign, opposition research gathered by Democrats and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign was secretly turned over to the FBI. It relied in part on false information from a Russian source. It turns out if anybody was colluding with Russians, it was Democrats and the Clinton campaign.

The so-called “dossier” was full of unverified allegations against Page and Trump.

In September of 2016, shortly before the presidential election, Yahoo News published a story linking Page to Russian operatives. Page says it was part of a government-led propaganda campaign to leak accusations about him and create an air of suspicion about Trump.

CNN was one of the media groups furthering the propaganda that sullied Page.

“Despite what a 400 page document suggests, former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page says he is not an agent of Russia,” stated one CNN news report.

Page’s reputation was being smeared in the international press with allegations that he knew were false.

When Page became aware that someone was unfairly fingering him for things he hadn’t done, he wrote a letter to then-FBI director James Comey.

“I sent a letter to Director Comey over that weekend [after the Yahoo news article] and just explaining, telling him reality, just how absolutely outrageous this whole thing is,” Page told me. “I brought up the fact that I had helped CIA and FBI over many years, and I said ‘We've had long conversations with the intelligence community, if you have any questions,’ I mean, this is just so implausible on the face, but ‘if you have any questions about it whatsoever, please do not hesitate to contact me.’ And that's essentially the message. And what's interesting is over the next two months, both the next month in October 2016 and then again January 2017 they put in these FISA [wiretap] warrants.”

The FBI had secretly used the “dossier” full of unverified allegations against Page and Trump, in part, to justify the most intrusive privacy invasion of a US citizen: a wiretap surveilling Page’s every contact and communication.

The FBI told the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or FISA court that Page and perhaps others in the Trump campaign were “collaborating and conspiring with the Russian government.”

The Government Spy Apparatus

Many people aren’t aware of it but before our intel agencies take the drastic step of committing a serious privacy invasion by using our intel surveillance tools on a US citizen, they are supposed to either have evidence in hand that the person has already acted as a foreign spy or is imminently about to become a foreign spy.

The FBI had neither when it obtained the warrants against Page.

Nonetheless, the FBI managed to get four wiretaps against him, each apparently lasting 90 days.

And most remarkably of all, the FBI’s supposedly most solid link to their Trump-Russia collusion theory says he’d never even spoken to Donald Trump.

“Had you met him?” I asked Page.

“I never met him at all, no,” said Page.

“You never met Donald Trump?” I reiterated.

“No.”

“Never spoke to him?”

“Never. Never on the phone. Nothing,” Page said.

Though he says he’d never met Trump, he was in an orbit that likely would have allowed the FBI to capture candidate, and later president-elect, Trump in the surveillance dragnet.

If someone is a target who is being wiretapped, the government allows itself to also surveil everyone who's in touch with that person, and everyone who's in touch with those people—at least two layers.

“You communicated with people including Steve Bannon, who were talking to President Trump?” I asked Page.

“Yes,” he said.

“Therefore, Trump would have or could have been wrapped up in the same surveillance?”

“Absolutely. Absolutely,” Page replied.

The surveillance secretly continued even after Trump was inaugurated. For one full year, Page’s every move was monitored. When no charges came, the media offered reasons for that, too—other than his possible innocence.

As a news anchor asked a reporter in one story: “If the FBI had reason to believe Carter Page was acting as an agent of Russia why isn’t he facing any charges?:

The reporter answered, “You might also want to have someone who is a suspected criminal roaming free because if they’re under surveillance you’re picking up a lot of valuable information.”

The theory seemed to be that the FBI hadn’t arrested Page so that agents could follow him around as he led them to his Russian contacts. It apparently didn’t matter to the media that the theory was ludicrous: it meant that if Page were really a spy, he would be stupid enough to continue his spycraft even as he knew the FBI was monitoring him, and after he’d been accused as a Russian spy in the global media for months.

The reporters never seemed to consider that there simply wasn’t any hard evidence to charge Page, and that the FBI had improperly targeted him to get at Trump.

In the end, after a lengthy investigation into the Russia collusion tale spun by Democrats and the Clinton camp, Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded no American colluded or even coordinated with Russia.

The FBI’s main target, the man they claimed for over a year was Trump’s unmistakable Russia connection— a spy— wasn’t charged with anything.

I asked Page, “A portrait of you was created by some in the media. Russian spy, hapless guy exaggerating his role with the campaign, not too bright. I mean there were a lot of narratives that went out there. How is it to deal with what happened to you over the course of those two years?”

Page answered, “My focus has always, my biggest concern throughout this has been the damage that it's done to the country. And so I always sort of laughed it off and I think in some ways that was a negative cycle in a way. Because sometimes if I'm laughing at these people they almost want to come after you even harder to really bring you down. But I was always more concerned about the damage that it was doing to the Trump administration and other people.”

“You’ve never met President Trump, you've never spoken to him?” I continued.

“Never,” Page said again.

“If you could say something to him, what would you say?”

“I would say having experience firsthand the witch hunt that he's had to live through and it's been a basically an all-encompassing challenge that I've been dealing with, including terror threats that I've constantly been dealing with over the course of years. To me, I understand what he's, the challenges he faced. The fact that he has achieved so much is just absolutely extraordinary in the face of all that. I'm really excited. I think now that this cloud has cleared and we're starting to get the real truth about the crimes by the Democrats, I think there's great things ahead.”

The Postscripts

After the FBI’s violations against Page were unearthed, an investigation by the Department of Justice Inspector General (IG) looked into wider spread surveillance practices by the FBI. The IG found problems in all 29 FBI wiretap applications it sampled.

Specifically, the IG checked on FBI compliance with what’s known as “Woods Procedures.” Those are special processes set up decades ago after surveillance abuses were exposed regarding FBI wiretaps against Americans. The Woods Procedures require careful checks and documentation to avoid more abuses.

At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

However, the IG found “an average of about 20 issues per application reviewed, with a high of approximately 65 issues in one application.”

What’s worse, the IG reported that the Justice Department later notified the surveillance court of “209 errors in those [wiretap] applications” and “Our further audit work identified over 200 additional instances of Woods Procedures non-compliance—where Woods Files did not contain adequate supporting documentation for statements in the 29 applications…We also identified at least 183 FISA applications for which the required Woods File was missing or incomplete.”

Nobody was publicly held accountable for the egregious lapses.

Carter Page sued former FBI Director James Comey and others in the federal government for allegedly using the media to spread false propaganda about him so that the untrue information would support the FBI’s quest to get a wiretap against Page.

The case was stymied due to built in protections the government has against lawsuits like Page’s.

But a recent court decision may change the course for Page’s search for accountability. Oral arguments in his lawsuit have now been scheduled for September.

Ultimately, as a result of the IG probe, the Justice Department charged one person with a crime regarding improperly targeting Page: FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith. Clinesmith had illegally doctored an email used to support one of the wiretap applications against Page.

When it comes to other crimes and offenders, the Justice Department is known to cast a wide net and levy a barrage of various charges. But when it came to Clinesmith, one of their own, he was hit with only a single charge: making a felony false statement.

Clinesmith received no jail time. And, believe it or not, he remains free to continue practicing law today.

FBI Director Christopher Wray apologized to the surveillance court for the Carter Page debacle but, when I last spoke to Page, nobody from the agency had apologized to him.