Carter Page: I've never communicated with Trump

Carter Page, the former foreign policy adviser to President Donald Trump's campaign now at the center of the ongoing Russia investigation, told ABC's "Good Morning America" on Tuesday that he has never in his life communicated with the president.

"I never spoke with him since. I never spoke with him any time in my life," Page said when asked by ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos if he had spoken to the president since a secret surveillance warrant against Page was approved in October, 2016. Stephanopoulos followed up with Page, asking, "no e-mail, no text, nothing like that?" to which Page replied, "never."


Page reportedly previously told congressional investigators that he never met the president. Both assertions seem to run counter to comments Page made during a December 2016 public appearance in Moscow broadcast live by the Russian network RT.

"I've certainly been in a number of meetings with him and I’ve learned a tremendous amount from him," Page said at the time. "In terms of actual briefings, you know, that’s not something I like to talk about."

In a separate interview Monday night with Fox News, Page said the details of a GOP memo into the FBI's alleged abuse of surveillance powers to spy on him were "even worse than I could have possibly imagined."

"There was a lot of details that kept dripping out and it sounded really bad," Page told Fox News host Laura Ingraham. "When I actually saw it, it was even worse than I could've possibly imagined.

Page praised the House Intelligence Committee for its "great" work, which included publicly releasing previously classified information last week that alleges that top FBI and Department of Justice officials failed to disclose how the request they used to spy on Page relied on information from a politically biased source.

Also on Monday, Page filed a pair of letters related to his civil lawsuit against two media organizations — Oath, the parent of Yahoo! News, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the parent of Radio Free Europe — he has accused of libeling him in their reporting about his alleged ties to the Russian government. One of the letters makes reference to the GOP memo, which he said "offered a depth of highly relevant evidence that directly contradicts most of DOJ's theories suggested in support of Defendant BBG in this civil action."

POLITICO reported Monday that Republican leaders are now conceding that the FBI did say that their surveillance request included information from Christopher Steele's dossier and that the bureau disclosed that backers for Steele's information came from political sources. Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee indirectly financed Steele's dossier.

But beyond his reaction to the memo, Page mostly continued his habit of dodging questions about his connections to Russia. As he has before, Page denied one of the key points of Steele's dossier, which is that Page had a secret meeting with a Russian oil executive, a close ally to Russian President Vladimir Putin, about possibly lifting sanctions against the country.

Trump officials have consistently tried to downplay Page's role in the campaign.

For his part, President Trump's son, Donald Trump, Jr., said the former foreign policy adviser is nothing more than a "patsy," given that Page became the target of government surveillance.

"This is a low-level person who worked in a campaign," Trump, Jr. told Fox News host Tucker Carlson Monday night. "I've seen the emails where somebody says 'this is someone who is no longer working on the campaign,' and I believe one of my family members responded 'who the heck is that individual, we've never heard of him.'"