WASHINGTON — Forget about “joined at the hip.” In New York, whether it’s Albany or the five boroughs, the social and political worlds are metaphysically one and the same.

So it was no surprise that when a Naval Academy grad and aspiring foreign-policy player named Carter Page asked New York Republican Party Chairman Edward Cox to help him gain entrée to the Trump presidential campaign, Cox was only too happy to oblige.

Page, of course, is now one of the central figures in the crossfire between President Donald Trump and Democrats on Capitol Hill led by Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer over special counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation.

On Friday, Trump and House Republicans released a controversial memo alleging the FBI obtained a warrant to intercept Page’s communications based on evidence from what the GOP lawmakers view as a tainted dossier authored by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.

The memo accuses the FBI and Justice Department officials of failing to notify the court that Steele had expressed distaste for Trump and his dossier research was underwritten in part by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.

Democrats including Schumer have countered that the GOP memo is contradictory and incomplete. House Intelligence Committee members on Monday approved public release of the Democrats’ 10-page rebuttal.

As was the case with the GOP memo, the White House now has five days to approve or disapprove release.

Page took two trips to Russia in July and December 2016, and met Russian government officials. He had been picked up on an unrelated FBI wiretap in 2013 of Russian officials who saw Page as a useful dupe.

It remains to be seen whether Page is at the heart of Trump campaign contacts with the Russian government in a plot to swing the 2016 election away from then frontrunner Hillary Clinton or an innocent small-timer destined to be an answer to a future trivia question.

But for Cox, referring Page to the Trump campaign manager at time in late 2015, Corey Lewandowski, was a courtesy extended to someone he knew from the 2008 presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain of Arizona in New York.

Page, 46, a 1993 Naval Academy graduate and Ph.D. who heads his own energy capital investment firm, is a member of the New York City-based Council of Foreign Relations, as is Cox, 71, the son-in-law of President Richard M. Nixon and veteran of Republican politics in the state.

Cox “is a New York fixture, like the street signs,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic political consultant. “He might as well have a street named after him.”

Cox said he viewed Page as knowledgeable on Russia and foreign policy matters in general who was going out on his own after having been with the investment firm Merrill Lynch, which collapsed in 2008 at the onset of the great recession.

In lengthy testimony before the House Intelligence Committee last November, Page recalled sending Cox an email expressing an interest in “volunteering” and getting back a positive response.

Page said he “always had an admiration for President Trump” from “just watching him, and the successes he's had in a business context.”