IT'S WHY DONALD GAVE HIM THE JOB:

Page's work in Russia began in the late 1990s, when he briefly worked for the Eurasia Group, a consulting firm that advises banks and multinational corporations. He left abruptly after three months.  

"It was very clear he was ideologically very strongly pro-Kremlin, which wasn't at all clear when he interviewed. As a result, he wasn't a good fit at Eurasia Group," Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, told The Guardian in 2017.

Bremmer even called Page "the most wackadoodle" Eurasia Group alum on Twitter.

Page would go on to get an MBA from New York University and work at Merrill Lynch, including at their Moscow office between 2004 and 2007. While there, he claimed to have worked on billions of dollars worth of transactions with Gazprom, a state-owned oil and gas company. Individuals involved in the trades have downplayed his role.

But investment banking wasn't Page's only contact with Russia: A Russian spy tried to recruit Page as an asset in 2013. Page--who says he thought the spy was a businessman--provided him with publicly available energy-related documents.

The man and two other operatives later decided that while "enthusiastic," Page was an "idiot," and not worth their time. That spring, Page had his first brush with FBI counterintelligence agents, who interviewed him about his contacts. The Russians were charged in a criminal case in 2015, though Page was not identified as their object of interest until April 2017.

When questioned by The Wall Street Journal about his 2013 meeting with investigators, Page said that he discussed his research on international politics "at length" and criticized the U.S. government's treatment of Russia.

Page began advising the Trump campaign in 2016. Then, the newly minted foreign policy advisor flew to Moscow that July to deliver a speech at Russia's New Economic School. This, too, caught the eye of the FBI. Page delivered a blistering critique of U.S. foreign policy.

"Washington and other Western capitals have impeded potential progress through their often hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratization, inequality, corruption and regime change," he said. 

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