How did Carter Page get to be a "national security advisor" to candidate Trump? He has no background for such a position. So where did he come from?
Simple: Russian intelligence recommended a useful idiot that had supplied industry information for them before.
Who Brought Carter Page into Donald Trump's Campaign?
Based on a review of several articles, the answer is Sam Clovis, who was Trump's campaign co-chair.
Chuck Ross reported this on 3/3/07:
The former Donald Trump campaign adviser who is reportedly being investigated over ties to Russia was brought into the Trump orbit last March by Sam Clovis, the co-chairman of Trump’s campaign who now serves as White House adviser for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Two Trump campaign officials confirmed the Clovis connection to The Daily Caller on Friday.
Ross also refers to this Sep 2016 article by Julia Ioffe which said:
But Dearborn wouldn’t return my calls, and someone who once worked for that policy shop told me it was neither Dearborn nor Burt, but campaign co-chair Sam Clovis who recruited Page. “If he was part of that original group of people, I can say with 70 percent confidence it was Sam Clovis,” this person told me.
“I’m not answering your questions,” Clovis told me. He refused to tell me if he was the one who found Page...
Josh Rogin of the WP hinted at the same in his September article as well:
Other Trump campaign sources told me that Page was never really part of Trump’s inner circle, although he was an early member of the team who was working with Sam Clovis, one of Trump’s first campaign policy advisers. Page has never met with Trump one on one and hasn’t been deeply involved in Trump foreign policy speeches or events, they said.
Julie Pace of the AP also confirmed it was Sam Clovis earlier in March:
One campaign official said Page was recruited by Sam Clovis, an Iowa Republican operative who ran the Trump campaign's policy shop and is now a senior adviser at the Agriculture Department. Clovis did not respond to messages from The Associated Press.
Some people cite this article to conclude that it was Jeff Sessions who brought Carter Page into the campaign, but that's not what the article actually says. It starts by pointing out that:
Donald Trump on Monday finally named several members of his team of foreign policy advisers...
Page was in that list of advisers. Nowhere in the article does it say that Sessions created that list. What the article does say is this:
The team of foreign policy advisers, led by Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, consists of counter-terrorism expert Walid Phares, energy consultant George Papadopoulos, former Defense Department inspector general Joe Schmitz, managing partner of Global Energy Capital Carter Page and former Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg. Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks confirmed the names to CNN.
In other words, Sessions was cited as the head of the foreign policy advisory team which consisted of several people. The article never said he brought Page into the campaign.
Page was also directly asked about Sessions, by NBC - and he stated flat out that it was NOT Sessions who introduced him to the Trump campaign.
Page would not say how he became affiliated with the Trump campaign, but denied a report in Politico in September that suggested that it may have been arranged by the chief of staff of Jeff Sessions, a then-senator who is now attorney general.
"I can confirm that is not the case," Page said. He wouldn't say how he ended up named by Trump.
P.S. Here is a video from March 2016 (via Matthew Shadle), where Clovis explicitly talks about how he interviewed all of Trump's foreign policy advisers.
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