Former Trump adviser at center of Russia firestorm alleges in bizarre statement that Justice Departm

Source: Business Insider

Carter Page, an early foreign-policy adviser to President Donald Trump's campaign, said in a statement Monday night that a court case involving a Russian spy who tried to recruit him in 2013 had been framed in a way to help "amplify the reputational damage against me."

BuzzFeed News obtained the court filing for the case, which included a transcript of a conversation between Victor Podobnyy, the person accused of spying, and Igor Sporyshev, another Russian operative, about trying to recruit someone identified as "Male-1."

Page confirmed to BuzzFeed that he was "Male-1." But he said in a statement later that his personal identity was made "easily identifiable" in the court documents because the US government wanted to punish him for his "public positions of dissent."

"Throughout 2014, I wrote multiple academic articles on the foreign policy failures of the Obama administration as exhibited most vividly in the botched 'Reset' with Russia," Page said. "When this case was announced in January 2015 by Attorney General [Eric] Holder during the final months of his term, the political vendetta tactics seen here also represented a clear retribution for my public positions of dissent."

<more>

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/carter-page-russia-spy-and-eric-holder-2017-4