Carter Page, a former Trump adviser whom many have speculated could be among those next to face federal charges, has said he had “zero” concerns and believed Robert Mueller will prove there was no collusion between the campaign and Russia.
Speaking a day after Mr Mueller, the Special Prosecutor, revealed criminal indictments against three former Trump campaign associates - campaign manager Paul Manafort, Mr Manafort’s deputy, Rick Gates, and foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos - Mr Carter said: “I have nothing to fear.”
Mr Page, 46, an American oil industry consultant who was among those named by Mr Trump in March 2016 as advising him on foreign policy, said the former reality television star had made clear his desire to improve US-Russia relations.
Mr Page is named several times in the now infamous Steele Dossier as being among those Trump associates who met with senior Russians, including oil baron Igor Sechin and senior Kremlin official Igor Divyekin. He has denied meeting either man, although he has admitted visiting Russia in the summer of 12016 to deliver a graduation ceremony speech at a prestigious Moscow school and again in December 2016, when he met business leaders.
“My gut instinct is that this original focus [by the federal probe] to uncover Russian collusion, will find nothing,” Mr Page told The Independent. “My gut instinct, is that I am glad we are going to get to the truth and we have someone looking at this.”
Asked for his thoughts on Mr Mueller, a Marine Corps officer during the Vietnam War and former FBI Director, Mr Page said: “He’s a military veteran. He is a good man.”
Reports suggest FBI agents spent many hours interviewing Mr Page this summer as the federal probe into Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 election gathered pace, after Mr Mueller was appointed to lead the investigation in May.
He was asked to do so after Mr Trump fired FBI Director James Comey after voicing concern about the direction the investigation was taken and claiming Mr Comey was a “grandstander”.
Mr Page, who worked in Russia for Merrill Lynch, last week met with officials from the Senate Intelligence Committee for five hours and is scheduled to appear before the House Intelligence Committee this week. He appeared without the assistance of a lawyer.
The indictment against Mr Papadopoulos reveals that he has admitted lying to FBI agents about the nature of his conversations with an intermediary to the Russian government and a Russian national. Emails included in the indictment reveal Mr Papadopoulos was told the Russian government wanted to provide “dirt” on Mr Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton.
Speaking to MSNBC this week, Mr Page said he exchanged some emails with Mr Papadopoulos and that in some of those, Russia “may have come up.” Asked about this, Mr Page said on Tuesday any mention of Russia in an email chain was written by Mr Papadopoulos.
Mr Page likened the Steele Dossier, which was produced by Washington-based research firm Fusion GPS, which contracted former British MI6 operative Christopher Steele, to the 2003 so-called dodgy dossier, produced by the British government of Tony Blair and designed to bolster the case for the invasion of Iraq. It was subsequently found to include many errors and examples of plagiarism.
Mr Page said he had launched his own lawsuit against Verizon’s Oath Inc, the umbrella firm that overseas AOL and Yahoo, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which overseas Voice of America, for what he called a fake report - “perhaps the most dangerous, reckless, irresponsible and historically-instrumental moments in modern-day sensational crime story journalism” - which claimed he was being investigated for alleged links to Kremlin.
Asked if he feared being charged, Mr Page said: “Charged for what? This dossier is totally false.”
He added: “I’m excited because we are going to get to to the bottom of the real intelligence.”
In recent days, Mr Trump and the White House have sought turn the focus away from Mr Mueller, by suggesting Ms Clinton should be investigated.
Mr Trump stepped up his rhetoric after it emerged that her campaign paid for GPS Fusion and Mr Steele to produce the dossier about him; the company was initially contracted by the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website funded by hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, who was keen to support Ted Cruz’s election run. Mr Trump has dismissed the contents of the dossier as lies.
Mr Trump has sought to distance himself from Mr Papadopoulos. “Few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar. Check the DEMS,” he said on Twitter.
Meanwhile, in Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he saw nothing wrong with Mr Papadopoulos reaching out to a Kremlin-linked think tank.
The Russian International Relations Council has confirmed contact with Mr Papadopoulos, but said a meeting never took place. The council insisted that it was an independent advisory body and that it hosted many politicians at various public meetings, according to the Associated Press.
Mr Lavrov said he was getting bored by the story. “I’m already quite sceptical and losing interest in the news coming out of these investigations,” he told reporters.
The foreign minister said it made more sense to look for criminality in Ukraine. After all, the indicted Mr Manafort had worked for Viktor Yanukovych and the Ukrainian government, he said.
“The Ukrainians have something to say about this,” he said. “They can tell you all about taking sides during the presidential election campaign.”
Other officials have looked to question the professionalism of the US investigation.
The Russian Foreign Ministry’s pugnacious press officer, Maria Zakharova, criticised apparent inaccuracies in Mr Mueller’s investigation. The initial report referred to Yulia Tymoshenko as former president of Ukraine when, in fact, she was prime minister from 2007-2010.
According to Ms Zakharova, the error demonstrated the report had been thrown together at the last moment.“You understand that serious investigations don’t contain this type of thing,” she said.
