Former Trump campaign aide Carter Page on Tuesday said he spoke with a confidential FBI informant during the 2016 presidential campaign and that he did not find anything out of the ordinary.
“I never found anything unusual, whatsoever,” Page said on CNN‘s “Anderson Cooper 360.”
Page revealed that he first met up with the source at Cambridge University in 2016 and kept in touch after the initial meeting, even meeting in the U.S.
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“We would talk about various things that are happening. And, you know, he’s someone who is, you know, long-term, someone who had been in, part of the establishment in Republican politics. So typically around the convention time and halfway through a presidential year, you keep bringing on more people in terms of potential supporters from the party, etc., and it just seemed like something like that,” Page said.
Reports surfaced last week, reports surfaced that a secret FBI informant met with three of President Trump’s campaign advisers during the 2016 presidential campaign.
The source reportedly met with Page, George Papadapolous and Trump campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis.
Trump has ramped up attacks on the FBI and Justice Department following the reports, suggesting that the FBI embedded the informant in his campaign for political purposes.
However, The New York Times reported last week that there is no evidence that the FBI dispatched the informant to infiltrate the Trump campaign.
Trump on Sunday demanded that the Justice Department look into his claim.
The Department of Justice then asked its inspector general (IG) to look into the claims. On Monday, the department agreed to expand an already existing probe into alleged Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act abuses to include the latest probe.
Trump on Wednesday lashed out at the “criminal deep state” and continued to press his claim that the FBI informant was a spy embedded within his campaign, dubbing it “spygate.”
“Look how things have turned around on the Criminal Deep State. They go after Phony Collusion with Russia, a made up Scam, and end up getting caught in a major SPY scandal the likes of which this country may never have seen before!” Trump tweeted.
“What goes around comes around!” he added.
The FBI and Justice Department are set to meet with lawmakers to review highly classified information related to the Russia investigation as a means of appeasing the president and his allies.