Carter Page files lawsuit against DNC over alleged FISA abuse

by Zack Budryk - 01/30/20 11:39 AM ET

Former Trump campaign aide Carter Page announced Thursday that he has filed a lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and law firm Perkins Coie over the unsubstantiated dossier that played a key role in the seeking of FISA warrants against him.

The dossier, which contains numerous unverified claims, was commissioned by Fusion GPS and compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.

Despite its role in the surveillance of Page, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz has said the dossier was not the basis for the investigation of then-candidate Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. The Justice Department has since determined that warrants to wiretap Page were unlawfully obtained and excluded information showing that Page was a CIA source.

Page’s attorneys said the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, was the “first of multiple actions” addressing abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and its associated court.

“This is a first step to ensure that the full extent of the FISA abuse that has occurred during the last few years is exposed and remedied,” Page’s attorney John Pierce said Thursday, according to Fox News. “Defendants and those they worked with inside the federal government did not and will not succeed in making America a surveillance state.”

Page previously filed a defamation suit in Oklahoma in October 2018, but the court threw out the suit in January 2019, ruling that he and the DNC lacked ties to the state. His attorneys argue the new lawsuit has jurisdiction in Illinois because Perkins Coie’s Chicago office was the site from which Fusion GPS “orchestrated” its work with the DNC.

The lawsuit claims the DNC, the law firm and partners Michael Sussman and Marc Elias used “false information, misrepresentations and other misconduct to direct the power of the international intelligence apparatus and the media industry against [Page] to further their political agenda.”

“This complaint recycles allegations by Carter Page that were dismissed by a federal judge in Oklahoma last year, and we expect that this latest lawsuit will likewise be dismissed,” a Perkins Coie spokesperson told The Hill.

Adrienne Watson, the DNC Deputy Communications Director & War Room Director, similarly told The Hill “Carter Page’s baseless claims are recycled from his previous lawsuit, which was dismissed last year.”

Updated Jan. 30 8:39 p.m.