Carter Page Met Russian Politician Behind Uranium One Deal During Trump Campaign
Trump Campaign foreign policy advisor Carter Page met last year with one of Russia’s Deputy Prime Ministers, who sat on Rosatom’s board of directors and was active in their acquisition of a controlling stake in Uranium One.
Carter Page is an energy consultant, Rosatom is the state-run Russian nuclear energy monopoly, and Arkady Dvorkavich served on its Board of Directors in 2010 and from at least 2009, until his departure in 2012.
The Democratic Coalition’s Scott Dworkin discovered photographic proof of the New Economic School’s graduation ceremony in Moscow earlier this year. (embedded below)
Dvorkovich is considered one of Putin’s closest aides in the Kremlin today.
Carter Page obtained Trump campaign permission to travel to Moscow during the height of the 2016 election campaign
That’s where Page met and spoke with the Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich.
The Washington Post reported last August:
After his speech at the New Economic School in Moscow, Page spoke briefly with another speaker, Arkady Dvorkovich, who is a graduate of the school, deputy to Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and now chairman of the Russian Railways board.
In 2010, while Dvorkovich was a Rosatom Director, the Russian nuclear utility completed its purchase of a significant, non-exportable stake in the parent company of an American uranium mine in Montana, which is directly in turn owned by Uranium One, based in Toronto, Canada.
The FBI has been investigating Carter Page’s Trump campaign activities for some time now, which first drew widespread attention last year when a month later, in September 2016, Yahoo! reported that he had also met with the CEO of a sanctioned Russian state-run oil giant, Rosneft, on that same trip.
In September 2016, Carter Page confirmed his contact with Dvorkovich, telling the Washington Post:
Page said that as part of the school’s graduation program, he did briefly meet and shake hands with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, who was also a speaker at the graduation event. That meeting was an exchange of pleasantries, he said.
It’s unknown what the two men really discussed.
The AP reports that Page now denies meeting the former Uranium One Director.
Last month, Page sued Yahoo! News and HuffPost for defamation over their reporting of a meeting with Rosneft last year.
As a Director, Arkady Dvorkovich’s role in the Uranium One transaction was so prominent, that he even attempted to meet former President Bill Clinton during the Rosatom acquisition of Uranium One shares in 2010.
But Dvorkovich’s request for a meeting with President Clinton was denied, because of the conflicting interests raised with his wife, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Deputy Prime Minister Dvorkovich is still active in Russia’s for-export nuclear activities, and as recently as last year was in Turkey and commented upon a 2013 deal to install a Rosatom power plant.
Dvorkovich isn’t the only high ranking member of Rosatom to migrate into a high level role in the Kremlin.
Sergey Kiriyenko was the General Director of Rosatom from 2007 until his departure last year to become Putin’s First Deputy Chief of Staff.
In June 2017, Congress released records showing that Trump’s disgraced former National Security Advisor, General. Michael Flynn, spent 2015 working on a deal between Rosatom, America and Saudi Arabia. As I wrote in Occupy Democrats:
In October 2016 — a month after the deal was announced — Vladimir Putin surprisingly appointed Rosatom’s Sergey Kiriyenko as his First Deputy Chief of Staff, a very powerful position in the Kremlin, in charge of domestic policy.
Kiriyenko has a lot of Republican contacts as a former [Russian] Prime Minister under Boris Yeltsin in 1998, namely convicted felon and GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff, whose illegal activities led to multiple House Republicans being convicted of crimes just over a decade ago.
House Republicans launched a new investigation into Uranium One this week, which Newsweek is calling a confusing “conspiracy theory.”
Forbes reports that the Uranium One deal is a “real empty barrel” because of the minimal amounts of uranium actually produced.
However, this real evidence demonstrates real ties between the President’s least favorite campaign aide, Page, and his most favored, shortest tenured White House official, Flynn, and the Russian state-run company which bought Uranium One.
“The only explanation for this meeting is something sinister,” says the Democratic Coalition’s senior advisor Dworkin, “Because Page was working for Trump at the time, and Dvorkovich has a direct line to Vladimir Putin.”
Any fact-based investigation into the Uranium One transaction should closely examine the links between Rosatom’s former upper-management and their ties to the Republican Party and Trump Campaign.
