Corey Lewandowski, the former campaign manager for President Donald Trump, said on Tuesday night that he now remembers receiving an email from Carter Page about a trip to Moscow despite claiming in March that he did not grant Page permission to take the trip.
Page told the House Intelligence Committee last week that he informed Lewandowski in an email about his plans to travel to Moscow in July 2016. Page said that Lewandowski approved of the trip as long as Page did not go as a representative of the Trump campaign.
Back in March, Lewandowski distanced himself from Page when the former campaign adviser first claimed that the Trump campaign had approved the Moscow trip. Lewandowski told Fox News in March that he had never met Page and told USA Today that he did not grant anyone permission to travel to Russia.
“I’m very clear about this,” he told USA Today. “I granted nobody permission to do that.”
He was less sure whether he emailed with Page, telling USA Today in March, “I can’t say unequivocally I’ve never responded to an email to somebody.”
Lewandowski changed his tune slightly on Tuesday night.
Fox News’ Martha MacCallum asked Lewandowski to “reconcile” Page’s testimony with his claims from March.
“There is no reconciliation necessary,” Lewandowski replied. “To the best of my recollection, I don’t know Carter Page. To the best of my knowledge, Carter Page never had a DonaldTrump.com email address, had no formal role in the campaign that I’m aware of, was never compensated by the campaign.”
He then appeared to say that he did allow Page to take the Moscow trip.
“And so when a low-level volunteer decides that they want to take a trip overseas and doesn’t report to me or work for the organization, what jurisdiction would I potentially have of telling him or her they can or could not travel overseas?” Lewandowski told MacCallum. “All I was clear about was, if you are going to travel, please do not pretend to be part of the campaign and say that you are part of the campaign.”
MacCallum asked Lewandowski to confirm that he does remember the email from Page. In response, Lewandowski said that his memory has just been “refreshed” but that he was too busy at the time to pay much attention to the email.
“Well, no — you have to remember, in the context of the campaign world – now, my memory has been refreshed — but to be clear, from what I understand and what I recall, that email was sent on June 19th of 2016, so about 18 months ago,” he said. “It also happened to be Father’s Day on a Sunday, and it also happened to be the day prior to me being terminated from the campaign, so with all due respect, there were many other things on my mind that day other than trying to understand why a volunteer was telling me he may or may not be traveling outside the country.”
MacCallum asked once more if Lewandowski remembered the email. In response he said that he did not remember the email “at the time” but now recalls seeing it.
“What I recall is now seeing that email has been brought back to my attention. I didn’t recall it at the time,” Lewandowski said.
Watch the interview via Fox News:
