Guest post by Joe Hoft
The Recent House Intel Committee Report on Russia included a large amount of information. The report notes numerous issues but hidden in Issue #27 is an obscure piece of information. Former Senator and current Attorney General Jeff Sessions oversaw the small team of five foreign policy experts for the Trump campaign. Included in this small group were Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.
According to the House Intel report, the future President was under pressure to put together a foreign policy team in March of 2016. A number of seasoned Republican foreign policy experts were unwilling to jump on the Trump train.
Because of this pressure from the press to show he had experts on his team, candidate Trump named then Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions as the chairman of his National Security Advisory Committee (NSAC). A few weeks later, candidate Trump released the names of five people on his team. The list included Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.
The House Intel Report states that –
There is no evidence that anyone on the Trump campaign was aware of Page’s past ties to Russian intelligence services-or Papadopoulos’ more recent contacts with a Russian-connected professor-when these two individuals were included among the advisors that were publicly announced on March 21. In fact, as [President Trump’s son in law Jared] Kushner candidly put it, “we put together that list because we vi1ere getting a lot of pressure from the media to put out a list of foreign policy advisers.”
The Daily Caller reported that both Carter Page and George Papadopoulos were hired by Sam Clovis, the Trump campaign’s co-chairman, but the source of this information remained anonymous.
