Former Trump campaign co-chair describes meeting with alleged FBI informant

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Ex-Trump campaign co-chair: The suspected informant and me

Sam Clovis recalls his meeting with the alleged FBI informant and what he believes the campaign spy was trying to accomplish. #Tucker

A former Trump campaign co-chairman shared details to Fox News on Tuesday night about a meeting he had with an individual who he now believes was an FBI informant.

Sam Clovis spoke out to “Tucker Carlson Tonight” amid reports the alleged FBI informant was in touch with members of the Trump campaign team during the 2016 presidential election.

Clovis told Carlson that prior to the meeting on Sept. 1, 2016, the alleged informant emailed him asking for a sit-down to discuss foreign policy and to share some writings which might help the campaign.

The meeting in Washington D.C. lasted about an hour and the pair discussed the individual’s research “and it mostly was focused on China,” Clovis said.

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Weeks later, Clovis told Carlson, he received an email from the alleged informant that contained “several attachments.”

“And I can be honest with you, Tucker, I haven’t even opened those attachments to this day,” Clovis said. “I have no idea what was in them but they were mostly titled, ‘papers that dealt with China.’”

Clovis said he did not know the individual before getting the initial email. He said the alleged informant claimed to know Carter Page, who also was part of Trump’s campaign team.

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It wasn’t until recent reporting that Clovis said he “started to put two and two together.”

“And then it started to make sense to me,” Clovis said, that the individual may have been “probing to find a weak spot in our campaign.”

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“Someone who might be vulnerable to connecting things back to those elusive 30,000 emails that supposedly the Russians had,” Clovis said, adding that he thought the alleged informant’s task was “to create an audit trail back to those emails from someone in the campaign or someone associated with the campaign so that they could develop a stronger case for probable cause to continue to issue warrants and to further an investigation.”

“Because I really felt after hearing all of these other things and listening to the reports that I’ve read, that this truly was an effort to build something that did not exist,” Clovis said.

When Carlson asked Clovis why he never read the email attachments, he replied that he “was busy” and because he “didn’t think that they were going to contribute anything.”

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He continued, “I’ve gone back and reviewed all my emails. I didn’t report that meeting to anyone in the campaign so the meeting was of no consequence to me as far as anything I can remember. And I’ve looked through all of my personal emails and everything, and I can’t find a record of it at all.”

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Fox News reported earlier Tuesday that the alleged informant spoke with Clovis, in addition to Carter Page and foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulous.

A source told Fox News' John Roberts that Clovis met with the alleged informant, whom he knew to be a professor, and had a conversation related to China. The source told Fox News that Russia did not come up.

The source told Fox News that Clovis received a follow-up email from the individual in the months before the election with research material on China, and another email on the day after the election congratulating the campaign.

Fox News’ Brooke Singman and John Roberts contributed to this report.