Carter Page, a former adviser to President Trump’s campaign, said Tuesday that any information he gave Russian spies in an encounter several years ago was “immaterial.”
“Any information I could give is, again, immaterial and all public information,” he told ABC News during an interview Tuesday at a New York energy conference.
The comments come after a report Monday that Page met a Russian intelligence operative three years before the 2016 race and passed him documents.
{mosads}He reportedly met with Victor Podobnyy, a Russian intelligence official whom the U.S. government later charged with acting as an unregistered agent for a foreign government.
The January 2015 charges were filed against Podobnyy and two others after federal investigators busted a Russian spy ring looking for information on U.S. sanctions and alternative energy efforts.
Page confirmed to BuzzFeed News on Monday that he is the person described as “Male-1” in the court filing, which states he encountered Podobnyy at a 2013 energy conference in New York City.
The filing says Page, an energy consultant, then met with, emailed with and “provided documents to [Podobnyy] about the energy business” from January to June of that year.
During a Monday interview with ABC News, Page said he cooperated in the case.
“I didn’t want to be a spy,” he said. “I’m not a spy.”