President Trump’s former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, reportedly gave approval to onetime foreign policy adviser Carter Page to go to Moscow last summer as a private citizen.
The trip was approved under the condition that Page would not be an official representative of Trump’s campaign, Politico reported, citing a former campaign adviser.
The publication reported that Page had first asked J.D. Gordon, his supervisor on the campaign’s National Security Advisory Committee, about making the July trip to give a speech in Moscow. Gordon told Politico he cautioned against the trip.
Page then asked Lewandowski and spokeswoman Hope Hicks. Lewandowski said he could make the trip, according to Politico, if he did not do so in a campaign capacity.
{mosads}“Is it possible that he emailed me asking if he could go to Russia as a private citizen? I don’t remember that, but I probably got 1,000 emails a day at that time, and I can’t remember every single one that I was sent. And I wouldn’t necessarily remember if I had a one-word response to him saying he could do something as a private citizen,” Lewandowski told Politico on Tuesday.
A White House official told Politico no one “discussed the trip within the campaign and certainly not with the candidate directly.”
Lewandowski said he had “never met or spoken” with Page in his life.
Reports surfaced last week that Gordon and Page had spoken with Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak, who met with several other Trump advisers, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions, then a GOP senator from Alabama; Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, now an adviser in the White House; and former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
Gordon and Page reportedly had met with the Russian diplomat at a conference hosted by the conservative Heritage Foundation in Cleveland in July. Several other national security advisers for the campaign were there as well.
The nature of the conversations was not clear, but people involved in the events surrounding the convention said it is not unusual for members of presidential campaigns to speak with foreign officials.
Page said Tuesday he was contacted by the Senate Intelligence Committee and asked to preserve materials relevant to its investigation into the Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential race, according to Politico.
“I will do everything in my power to reasonably ensure that all information concerning my activities related to Russia last year is preserved,” Page said in a letter to Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and ranking member Mark Warner (D-Va.).