Not until lurid headlines damned Carter Page as a traitor to his country in September 2016, six weeks before the presidential election, did he realize someone was using him to play a dirty political trick.
Reporters had been hounding the energy investor with strangely detailed questions about his ties to Russia. Page told each of them that he was a former US Navy lieutenant, a graduate of Annapolis, an Eagle Scout — hardly a likely protagonist in some cloak-and-dagger drama.
But he had also served as a foreign policy adviser to Donald J. Trump. And secretly, within a collection of Democratic opposition-research memos soon to be known as the Steele Dossier, Page had been cast as the GOP candidate’s liaison to Vladimir Putin.
It was the launch of the collusion tale that nearly destroyed a presidency. And the little-known Page, now 49, had an unsought starring role.
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