Carter Page met with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich while in Moscow in July 2016, the former foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump’s campaign confirmed to CNN on Friday.
The encounter occurred during a conference in July 2016 at Moscow’s New Economic School, Page said, describing it as more of a “hello” in passing than a formal meeting.
Page first confirmed the encounter with a senior Russian government official to The New York Times on Friday night. He later told CNN’s Jim Sciutto the Russian official’s name.
Page shared an email with at least one Trump campaign aide “describing insights he had after conversations with government officials, legislators and business executives during his time in Moscow,” the Times reported, citing one person familiar with the contents of the message. The email was read aloud during Page’s closed-door testimony to the House intelligence committee, the newspaper reported.
A source told CNN’s Manu Raju about the existence of an email Page wrote to a Trump campaign aide following his trip to Moscow in July 2016.
The latest revelations about Page’s trip in the summer of 2016 differ from the details he has shared with the news media over the last several weeks. When Page spoke with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Friday afternoon, he said he had only met with academics and a few business people whom he had “known for over a decade.”
In his interview with Tapper, Page also confirmed that before going on the trip he mentioned his plans to travel to Russia to then-Sen. Jeff Sessions as well as “a few people” on the Trump campaign.
When Tapper asked if Sessions, now the US attorney general, was “the only one on the campaign that knew about the trip,” Page replied: “I mentioned it to a few people.”
“Who else?” Tapper asked.
“You know, it’ll come out,” Page said. “Things keep leaking in this.”
Although Page said his comment to Sessions was only in passing and the trip was unrelated to the campaign, he statements call into question Sessions’ testimony to Congress regarding the Trump campaign and any potential ties between it and Russia.
