Jeff Sessions allegedly steered Russian operative Carter Page to Donald Trump campaign
Republican Congressman Darrell Issa surprised many by calling for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from the investigation into Donald Trump and Russia if and when it reaches the prosecution stage. But considering what’s already publicly known about Sessions’ pivotal role in the Trump-Russia scandal, it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Issa already knows what we know, and considering his role on the House Judiciary Committee, he probably knows much more than we do.
One of the key questions in the investigation into Donald Trump and Russia is where Carter Page came from and why. His resume up to that point had largely consisted of doing financial business with Russia and giving speeches that praised Russia. But he was almost inexplicably hired by the Trump campaign as a foreign policy adviser, despite having no background to justify such a role.
During the election it was revealed that the FBI was investigating Page’s ties to Russia. And after the election, he infamously turned up in Moscow for unknown reasons in December. And then in February it was revealed that he’d been colluding with Russian intel officials during the election. So how did Carter Page first find his way to Donald Trump? Just ask Jeff Sessions.
Back in September, a Politico report on Carter Page included the following revelation way down around the twentieth paragraph: “Someone else told me that the Page connection was Rick Dearborn, Sessions’ chief of staff, who hired Page because Dearborn knew nothing about foreign policy but needed to put together a foreign policy staff for Trump’s Alexandria, Virginia, policy shop and he happened to know Page.”
That same Politico article goes on to report that another source believes it was instead Republican operative Sam Clovis who steered Carter Page to the Donald Trump campaign. But here’s what we know for sure: there is at least one source out there who claims Page was routed to the Trump campaign through the Senate office of Jeff Sessions – and Politico considered that source credible enough to include the claim in its reporting.
That alone creates enough of a grey area such that Jeff Sessions must recuse himself from any investigation into Donald Trump and Russia, considering that one of the key conspirators is being credibly accused of having been hired to the Trump campaign by Sessions’ chief of staff Rick Dearborn. And that’s before getting to the conflict of interest involved in Trump going on to Sessions as Attorney General, and going on to hire Dearborn as Deputy White House Chief of Staff. Help us investigate Trump-Russia!
