U.S. Navy veteran and former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page told Breitbart News on Tuesday that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) has not apologized to him yet for falsely accusing him of being a Russian agent during the 2016 election.
Page said he’s received “no word” from Schiff, even after a recent Justice Department inspector general report revealed Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) misconduct in the agency’s applications for an initial and subsequent Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants on Page.
The DOJ IG report also revealed the FBI used opposition research by ex-British spy and Fusion GPS contractor Christopher Steele to get the surveillance warrants on Page, even though that information was completely uncorroborated.
Schiff echoed those same uncorroborated claims during a high-profile House Intelligence Committee hearing on Russian interference on March 20, 2017, wrongly accusing Page of meeting with Russians to coordinate collusion with the Trump campaign in 2016.
During that hearing, Schiff — citing Steele — erroneously claimed that Page had a “secret meeting with Igor Sechin, CEO of the Russian gas giant, Rosneft.” Again citing Steele, he claimed that Page was offered brokerage fees on a deal involving a 19 percent share of the company and that then-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort chose Page to “serve as a go-between for the Trump campaign and Russian interests.”
After Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) published a memo last year outlining some of the FBI wrongdoings, Schiff released a counter-memo that said the FBI did nothing wrong in regards to the FISA warrants on Page.
In an interview with PBS on Sunday, Schiff showed no contrition when asked whether he felt “any sympathy” for Page.
“I have to say Carter Page came before our committee and dissembled for hours of his testimony, denied things that we knew were true, later had to admit them during his testimony,” Schiff told PBS Firing Line‘s Margaret Hoover.
“It’s hard to be sympathetic to someone who isn’t honest with you when he comes and testifies under oath. It’s also hard to be sympathetic when you have someone who has admitted to being an adviser to the Kremlin,” he added.
When Hoover mentioned that Page was actually helping the CIA — a fact that an FBI lawyer purposely hid from the court granting FISA warrants on Page as well as the Justice Department, Schiff responded, “Yes. Yes. Which we didn’t know about.”
He acknowledged, “And that should have been included, made clear. And it wasn’t, according to the inspector general.”
Other Democrats have not been so reluctant to say that Page was wronged.
When asked if the U.S. government owes Page an apology, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the number two Democrat in the Senate, told CBS News on December 15, “Well, I can certainly tell you, based on what we saw, they do.”
“And here’s the bottom line. Many of us have been looking at this FISA, the secret FISA court for years, saying this isn’t the first and won’t be the last time that the FBI misrepresents evidence before this court and proceeds,” Durbin said. “What happened in this situation was inexcusable.”
After Durbin’s remarks, Page said he was awaiting an apology from Schiff for his false statements during the March 2017 hearing, which he said inspired threats against him.
“Main apology I’m awaiting is from @RepAdamSchiff for the terror threats he helped inspire with his false statements on TV on March 20, 2017.@HouseIntel should accept @DevinNunes’ request and call the great @JusticeOIG to testify,” he tweeted:
As Breitbart News reported recently, the Senate has held two hearings on the DOJ IG report, but the House has held none.
Follow Breitbart News’ Kristina Wong on Twitter or on Facebook.
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