Carter Page, what the hell?

| 9:16 am EDT September 11, 2018
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There are so many major players in Donald Trump’s Russia scandal, you need a flow chart to keep track of them all – but Carter Page is not one of them. His role in the Trump campaign was a minor one. His contacts with the Russians don’t seem to fit with the Trump-Russia collusion big picture. He’s best known for giving entertainingly goofy, if pointless, cable news interviews. He’s nobody, right? So why do Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin keep placing so much importance on him?

Back when Donald Trump’s House GOP allies were building an entire Trump-Russia defense based around the idea that Carter Page was the victim of a baseless FISA surveillance warrant, I was tempted to write it off as mere happenstance. Maybe Page was just the one guy whose story they felt they could properly twist for their own purposes. Still, it seemed odd to focus in on a guy like Page. Most people think he’s a lying doofus based on his cable news appearances, and he’s admitted that he was mixed up with Russian spies as far back as 2014, meaning he’s not the ideal candidate to sell as a victim and martyr.

Now comes a weird new situation in which Donald Trump is threatening to declassify documents related to Department of Justice official Bruce Ohr and – you guessed it – Carter Page. We know why Trump is dragging Ohr into this. Trump has spent months tweeting phony conspiracy theories about Ohr and his wife. Rachel Maddow insisted last night that Trump is making this move because Vladimir Putin told him to, which makes sense, considering that Ohr has exposed so much of Putin’s corruption. But why is Carter Page once again right in the thick of it when it comes to Trump’s defense strategy?

Maybe it’s coincidence that Carter Page, a nobody who isn’t known to have played a meaningful role in the Trump-Russia scandal, has now twice been held up by Donald Trump like a human shield in the scandal. Or maybe Page is far more important to Putin, and thus to Trump, than we know. This doesn’t tell us that Page is guilty, innocent, or otherwise. We don’t even know if he’s currently under investigation. But it sure is weird that every time Donald Trump mounts a defense in this scandal, this guy keeps ending up front and center.