In December 2016, Trump attorney Don McGahn told Carter Page to "immediately cease" calling himself a Trump adviser, according to a letter obtained by Fox News.
McGahn, who is now White House counsel, also told Page not to suggest he was more than a member of an advisory council “who never actually met with the president-elect.”
“You were merely one of the many people named to a foreign policy advisory committee in March of 2016 -- a committee that met one time,” McGhan, now White House counsel, also wrote in his letter to Page. “You never met Mr. Trump, nor did you ever ‘advise’ Mr. Trump about anything. You are thus not an ‘advisor’ to Mr. Trump in any sense of the word.”
Page's communications were being monitored by the FBI, according to the Washington Post, as early as last summer because he was suspected of acting as a Russian agent. An international financier who specialized in Russia's oil and gas markets, Page once worked in Moscow. He has admitted to meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in Philadelphia at the 2016 Republican National Committee convention.