Former Trump campaign aide Carter Page told Hill.TV on Wednesday that if he could do anything differently during special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, he would have “fought back.”
“What would I have done differently? I would have fought back,” Page told hosts Krystal Ball and Buck Sexton on “Rising.”
“I was hoping that this was sort of just blow over,” he added.
Page’s comments came days after Attorney General William Barr submitted his summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings in the Russia investigation, which concluded that there was no conspiracy or coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia in 2016.
U.S. intelligence officials investigated possible communication between Page and Kremlin officials, specifically a trip Page took in July 2016 to Moscow during which he met with a senior Kremlin official.
A redacted surveillance warrant application to wiretap Page, released by the Justice Department over the summer, showed that the FBI believed him to be “the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government.”
Conservatives have also alleged that the FBI used a controversial dossier, compiled by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, as a means to wiretap Page.
Page sued Oath Inc., the parent company of Yahoo News, and alleged that he had been threatened as a result of an article published in September 2016, reporting that he was being investigated by U.S. intelligence agencies after the Moscow trip.
“I was a private figure until Friday, Sept. 23, 2016,” Page said. “My Wikipedia page popped up within hours of this fraudulent, completely defamatory Yahoo News article.”
A New York City judge threw out the lawsuit a year ago.
— Julia Manchester
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