Carter William Page (born June 3, 1971) is an American petroleum industry consultant and a former foreign-policy adviser to Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential election campaign.

[1] Page is the founder and managing partner of Global Energy Capital, a one-man investment fund and consulting firm specializing in the Russian and Central Asian oil and gas business.

In December 2019, Rosemary Collyer, a senior U.S. district judge and one of four FISA Court judges who approved a warrant authorizing the wiretapping of Page, issued an order saying the FBI "provided false information to the National Security Division (NSD) of the Department of Justice, and withheld material information from NSD which was detrimental to the FBI's case, in connection with four applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for authority to conduct electronic surveillance of a U.S. citizen named Carter W.

[20] He served in the U.S. Navy for five years, including a tour in western Morocco as an intelligence officer for a United Nations peacekeeping mission, and attained the rank of lieutenant.

[3] After leaving Merrill Lynch in 2008, Page founded his own investment fund, Global Energy Capital, with partner James Richard and a former mid-level Gazprom executive, Sergei Yatsenko.

[3][23] The fund operates out of a Manhattan co-working space shared with a booking agency for wedding bands, and as of late 2017, Page was the firm's sole employee.

[26] He sought unsuccessfully to publish his dissertation as a book; a reviewer described it as "very analytically confused, just throwing a lot of stuff out there without any real kind of argument.

[30] Stephen Sestanovich later described Page's foreign-policy views as having "an edgy Putinist resentment" and a sympathy to Russian leader Vladimir Putin's criticisms of the United States.

[3] In August 2013, Page wrote, "Over the past half year, I have had the privilege to serve as an informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin in preparation for their Presidency of the G-20 Summit next month, where energy issues will be a prominent point on the agenda.

[28][33][34] Page was the subject of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant in 2014, at least two years earlier than was indicated in the stories concerning his role in the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump.

[40][41] To issue the warrant, a federal judge concluded there was probable cause to believe that Page was a foreign agent knowingly engaging in clandestine intelligence for the Russian government.

[59] Former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Joseph diGenova, who was under consideration to join Trump's legal team in 2018,[60] argued before and after release of the Mueller Report that the FISA warrants to surveil Page were obtained illegally.

[74] Page also testified that after delivering a commencement speech at the New Economic School in Moscow, he spoke briefly with one of the people in attendance, Arkady Dvorkovich, a Deputy Prime Minister in Dmitry Medvedev's cabinet, contradicting his previous statements not to have spoken to anyone connected with the Russian government.

[75] In addition, while Page denied a meeting with Sechin as alleged in the Steele dossier, he did admit he met with Andrey Baranov, Rosneft's head of investor relations.

[76] The dossier alleges that Sechin offered Page a brokerage fee from the sale of up to 19 percent of Rosneft if he worked to roll back Magnitsky Act economic sanctions that had been imposed on Russia in 2012.

[78] He was not charged with any crimes, though the report indicated there were unanswered questions about his actions and motives: "The investigation did not establish that Page coordinated with the Russian government in its efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election."

[81] On December 9, 2019, US Inspector General Michael Horowitz testified to Congress that the FBI showed no political bias at the initiation of the investigation into Trump and possible connections with Russia.

[85][86][87][88] Horowitz said he had no evidence the warrant problems were caused by intentional malfeasance or political bias rather than "gross incompetence and negligence",[89] adding his report was not an exoneration: "It doesn't vindicate anybody at the F.B.I.

[96][97] On January 29, 2021, Clinesmith was sentenced to 12 months federal probation and 400 hours of community service after pleading guilty in August to making a false statement.

[99] In December 2019, the Justice Department secretly notified the FISA court that in at least two of the 2017 warrant renewal requests "there was insufficient predication to establish probable cause" to believe Page was acting as a Russian agent.

[101] The Republican-controlled Committee released its final report on 2016 Russian election interference in August 2020, finding that despite problems with the FISA warrant requests used to surveil him, the FBI was justified in its counterintelligence concerns about Page.

"[102] The Committee found that although Page's advisory role in the Trump campaign from March 2016 to September 2016 was insignificant, Russian operatives may have thought he was more important than he actually was.

[103][104] The Justice Department's inspector general revealed in 2019 that in the six weeks prior to its receipt of Steele's memos, the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane team "had discussions about the possibility of obtaining FISAs targeting Page and Papadopoulos, but it was determined that there was insufficient information at the time to proceed with an application to the court.

[62] In February 2018, the Nunes memo alleged FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe's testimony backed Republican claims that the "dossier formed 'a significant portion' of the Carter Page FISA application".

'[110]According to Ken Dilanian, "The so-called dossier formed only a smart part of the evidence used to meet the legal burden of establishing 'probable cause' that Page was an agent of Russia.

Chief Justice Collins J. Seitz Jr. said "the article at the crux of the case—by Yahoo News reporter Michael Isikoff—was either completely truthful or, 'at a minimum,' conveyed a true 'gist,' even if it included some 'minor' or 'irrelevant' incorrect statements."

Bloomberg Law reported that "The court dismissed as far-fetched Page's theories about a conspiracy among interconnected media and political figures to tarnish Trump by concocting the Russia investigation from thin air.

The defendants included James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Kevin Clinesmith, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, Joe Pientka III, Stephen Soma, and Brian J.

[125][126] The suit was dismissed on September 1, 2022, by United States district court judge Dabney L. Friedrich, who wrote: To the extent these allegations are true, there is little question that many individual defendants, as well as the agency as a whole, engaged in wrongdoing.