The memo describes how the FBI conducted surveillance on Page, who was a foreign policy adviser on Trump’s campaign

Who is Carter Page, the Trump ex-adviser at the center of the memo furore?

He is the mysterious aide who just won’t go away: at the center of the furore over a controversial memo Donald Trump green-lit for release on Friday is Carter Page, who once served as a foreign policy adviser on Trump’s presidential campaign.

The so-called Nunes memo, named for House intelligence chairman Devin Nunes, describes how the FBI sought and received a warrant to conduct surveillance on Page, whom the bureau had been following since at least 2013, owing to his contacts with Russian intelligence operatives.

Q&A What is the Nunes memo? Show Hide The memo was written by aides to Devin Nunes, chairman of the House intelligence committee and a member of the Trump transition team. The committee is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election but the inquiry has devolved into a fight about the ​separate FBI investigation​, now​ led by special counsel Robert Mueller​. On Friday, Nunes published the memo after Donald Trump declassified it. The memo revolves around a wiretap on Carter Page, an adviser to the Trump campaign, alleging the FBI omitted key information when it applied for the wiretap. The findings “raise concerns with the legitimacy and legality of certain DoJ and FBI interactions” with the court that approves surveillance requests, the memo says. It also claims “a troubling breakdown of legal processes established to protect the American people from abuses”. The memo criticizes investigators who applied for the wiretap, saying they used material provided by an ex-British agent, Christopher Steele, without sufficiently disclosing their source. The memo says Steele was “desperate that Trump not get elected”. The memo also says texts between an FBI agent and FBI attorney “demonstrated a clear bias against Trump” and says there is “no evidence of any co-operation or conspiracy between Page” and another Trump aide under investigation, George Papadopoulos. The memo casts deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein in a negative light. ​Rosenstein could fire Mueller. The president, said to dislike Rosenstein, could fire and replace him. The FBI ​argued against the memo’s release. Democrats wrote a rebuttal and sided with the bureau. ​The president reportedly told associates he believes the memo will help discredit the special counsel. Alan Yuhas

Page, a native of Poughkeepsie, New York, who made trips to Moscow during the campaign and the presidential transition, has been described as an energy consultant and businessman with an interest in foreign policy.

Page was also described by a Russian intelligence agent who was trying to recruit him as an asset for Moscow in 2013 in another way: “idiot”.

“He wants to meet when he gets back,” the agent, Victor Podobnyy, said in a conversation recorded by US intelligence. “I think he is an idiot and forgot who I am. Plus he writes to me in Russian [to] practice the language.”

In eight hours of testimony before Nunes’s committee late last year, Page flatly denied the accusation that he had colluded with Russia in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, though he admitted communicating with senior Trump campaign officials about a July 2016 trip to Moscow in which he met with at least one top Russian government official.

'Nunes memo' published after Trump declassifies controversial document Read more

Page told congressional investigators that the meeting was short and inconsequential. He also downplayed his role in the Trump campaign, saying he did not know Trump personally but learned from studying him on video.

“I’ve never met Donald J Trump in my life, I’ve learned a lot from him, and I got great insights from that, from listening and studying the information that he – that he’s provided in public forums,” Page said.

Page, 47, is a graduate of the US Naval Academy with an MBA from New York University. He speaks Russian and got to know the country as an employee of Merrill Lynch’s Moscow office from 2004 to 2007.

Page has said he does not believe Russians tampered with the US election and dismissed the notion of any collusion between the campaign and Moscow. He has said the attention over his campaign activities has ruined his career and derailed his life.

But Page’s own account of Russian contacts during the campaign, and his admission that he discussed those contacts with top Trump aides, has not only contradicted Trump’s denials of any contacts but also fueled suspicions of coordination of some kind.