on the who of the investigation. who did russians approach, trick or even get cooperation from. news breaking controversial former trump foreign policy adviser carter page plans to plead the fifth to avoid testifying. page is the second potential witness talking about pleading the fifth. you remember mike flynn woflt they think exercising the constitutional right is suspicious? we don t know because bob mueller ain t talking. even the right wing republican ken starr who famously led the clinton-lewinsky inquiry is now saying mueller is not leaking because he has rock ribbed integrity. a vote of confidence that could enrage some of trump s allies. we re not seeing leaks out of the investigation. as far as we know. and what we know of bob mueller and his back ground is he is a person of total rock red integrity. he is moving very aggressively
already has a lot of his communications potentially with the russians. if for no reason other than basically the time line of events, carter page is an important character. why? because it was after carter page s trip to moscow where he met with senior government and business officials close to vladimir putin, that he came back to the u.s. that a lot of the suspicious activity took place, including the changing of the platform, the dumping of wikileaks, and all the other meetings with trump officials with kislyak and others. final word on pleading the fifth. one other thing that might be going on here with concerns about criminal liability, it could be, and this is speculation, that maybe he is exploring or has already cut a deal with robert mueller to be a cooperating witness. and if so, he may not want to testify hopefully congress for fear of compromising his value
into it. my reporter side says it is really interesting when you cover this story, alleging an international conspiracy, and a whole bunch of people who used to do a lot of talking including in forums like this are suddenly all clamming up. politically as a reporter, it definitely raises suspicions and if you are not a lawyer, you might say that is going to raise alarm bells. if you are a criminal lawyer and that you know your client might be facing potential criminal charges, as are other actors in this case, like michael flynn, and like paul manafort, and yes, also including potentially carter page who we know had a fisa wiretap last year. then that doesn t sound like such a brad strategy from a legal perspective. and i believe in his statement he said he wanted to make sure that he didn t self-incriminate. he knows that the government
announcing it. i hadn t thought in terms of doing it. could i give you some of the names. carter page, ph.d.. carter keeps popping up. where do you see his story going? well, he s been portrayed as a clueless stooge. but his name pops up all over that infamous dossier. and he did present himself as an energy consultant. he had lots of connections with state-owned energy companies in russia. he appears to have been a go-between in possible, between trump allies and various oligarchs, companies to get revenue for the trump properties. and so i think you can t dismiss him as somebody who is irrelevant. whether he was a witting stooge or an unwitting stooge.
and the use of social media and manipulation. so one of the shings that sheryl sandberg is concerned about, new laws, new regulations that might make the playing field more difficult for groups iklike facebook. we need to talk about carter page. it is certainly a political part of story if not as legal a part and i say that because carter page has proven to be so unreliable, so wacky, so zany, so ridiculous. at a certain point investigators may look at him more like a tool than a master conspirator. here was donald trump name checking carter as a policy adviser. we heard you might be announcing your foreign policy advisory team soon. during the week he ll be