The FBI believes that a former campaign adviser to Donald Trump was "collaborating" with Russia while working to influence the 2016 presidential election, revealed secret documents handed over to American news organizations.
The president of the United States responded on Sunday (22) by classifying his former assistant's wiretap as part of a partisan and illegal conspiracy because some of the information the FBI handled came from Democratic sources.
"It could be said more and more that Trump's Presidential Campaign was illegally spied on (watchdog) for dishonest Hillary Clinton to gain political benefits," the president tweeted, without elaborating.
Carter Page, Trump's foreign policy adviser during the 2016 presidential campaign, is mentioned directly in a document issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in October 2016, The New York Times.
"The FBI thinks that Page has been targeted for recruitment by the Russian government," notes the text written by a US federal police official.
The publication of this report comes just over a week after the special prosecutor charged with investigating Kremlin interference in the US election accused twelve Russian intelligence agents of hacking the Democrats' computers.
Surveillance over Carter Page became the target of a strong rivalry between Democrats and Republicans in Congress last February.
Republicans wrote a note stating that the FBI was basing surveillance on Page on a Democrat-funded mission and the campaign team of its candidate, Hillary Clinton.
Challenging the director of the FBI and the Department of Justice, Donald Trump then released this four-page note, which relied on the document now revealed.
The White House first blocked the publication of a counter-note from Democrats that Carter Page's vigilance was "grounded in irrefutable evidence and reasonable reason."
The New York Times reported that a judge had approved the initial wiretapping document, an authorization subsequently ratified by three other magistrates.
In the document, drafted a month before Trump's victory, the FBI claims to believe that "the efforts of the Russian government are coordinated with Page and perhaps with other individuals associated with the Candidate # 1 campaign," referring to the Republican postulant.
"Page has established relationships with Russian government officials, including Intelligence agents," the statement added.
Carter Page, who has so far not been formally charged, told CNN on Sunday, "No, I've never been an agent of a foreign power."
