The House intelligence committee plans to release a transcript of an interview scheduled for next week with former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser Carter Page, a committee source told CNN on Friday.
Page, whose testimony has been sought by several congressional panels investigating Russian election meddling, is being interviewed by the House intelligence panel Thursday. Page is slated to testify behind closed doors, but the committee is planning to use a unique format for the hearing that will allow a transcript of the interview to be publicly available three days afterward, the source said.
It’s still unclear whether Page plans to answer the House committee’s questions. The Senate intelligence committee has issued a subpoena to Page after he told the committee earlier this month that he would plead the Fifth Amendment to keep from turning over a “vast array” of documents the panel requested, which he argued was “beyond the charter” of its probe.
Page did not respond to CNN questions about his House hearing.
The House intelligence hearing with Page on November 2 was listed on the committee’s website as “open in a closed space.” A second committee source told CNN that means the hearing will be held in the panel’s closed spaces in the Capitol, without the public or media present. But it will be an unclassified hearing, the source said, which allows for the release of the transcript.
Frequently, the House intelligence panel has allowed witnesses who have pled the Fifth to do so without physically coming to the committee spaces, a Democratic committee aide told CNN last week. But the committee did require two partners of Fusion GPS — the firm that funded the opposition research dossier on President Donald Trump — to appear to invoke their constitutional right not to answer the committee’s questions.
The congressional Russia investigators have been seeking testimony from Page for months now, as the former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser has gone back and forth with the panels.
In a May letter, Page told the Senate intelligence committee that he had “brief interactions” several years ago with a Russian official he described as a “junior attaché.” In the same letter, he attacked the “bitter” Senate investigation into possible collusion between Trump associates and the Russians as a “show trial.”
After he was subpoenaed by the Senate intelligence panel, Page told CNN: “I’m cooperating with everyone in DC who wants my help” to end this “witch hunt.”
Page was interviewed by the Senate intelligence committee Friday, a source familiar with the meeting told CNN. Page’s meeting with the Senate panel was first reported by NBC News.
Page has demanded that the government release his communications that were picked up during surveillance operations. The FBI obtained a warrant to monitor Page on suspicions he knowingly engaged in clandestine intelligence activities on behalf of Moscow, according to an April report from The Washington Post. Page has disputed the idea he ever collected intelligence for the Russians.
This story has been updated to include additional developments.
