Trump administration settles lawsuit with ex-Trump adviser Carter Page
By Holmes Lybrand, CNN
(CNN) — The Justice Department has reached a settlement in a lawsuit brought by former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, who sued the DOJ and FBI over flawed government surveillance he faced due to his Russian contacts in 2016, according to a filing with the Supreme Court Wednesday.
Page, who investigators focused on during their probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, is one of a growing number of past Trump allies who have reached legal settlements with the administration during Trump’s second term.
In 2016, investigators wiretapped Page through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a hotly debated probing tool federal investigators use with cases involving a foreign nexus. An inspector general report said the process used to obtain the warrant to monitor Page was riddled with mistakes and errors.
Because of his work as a campaign adviser and connections to the Russian government, investigators wanted to monitor Page as they probed potential collaboration between the Trump campaign and Russia.
Page sued the Justice Department and FBI and an array of ex-FBI officials, including former Director James Comey, former top counterintelligence official Peter Strzok, and former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who was convicted of doctoring an email related to the FISA application.
Page’s lawsuit for violating his constitutional rights – seeking $75 million in damages – was initially tossed by a federal judge, who found in part that Page had not sued the people who had conducted the surveillance. An appeals court upheld that decision.
The filing did not outline the terms of the settlement. CNN has reached out to Page for comment.
A spokesperson for the Justice Department said in a statement, “The targeting of American citizens for political purposes constitutes a severe violation of civil liberties. This Department of Justice is committed to dismantling the weaponization of government and today’s settlement represents one of many initiatives to provide justice to those abused by rogue actors.”
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report highlighted Page’s pre-campaign contacts with at least two “Russian intelligence officers,” a trip he took to Moscow in summer 2016 where he gave a speech that “criticized the U.S. government’s foreign policy toward Russia” and his interactions with Kremlin officials where the Trump campaign was discussed.
Based on these Russia ties, plus other unverified information from the notorious Trump-Russia dossier, federal investigators asked the FISA court let them to wiretap Page for roughly one year. The DOJ later conceded that while the first two warrants proper, but the final two warrants were not legally supported.
“The settlement does not involve petitioner’s claims against the individual defendants,” the filing says.
The settlement is not the first the Trump administration has reached in lawsuits related to the 2016 Russia probe.
Last month, Trump’s Justice Department settled a lawsuit with Michael Flynn, awarding him over a million dollars following what he said was a wrongful prosecution.
Flynn sued the government for $50 million, alleging that the FBI tried to entrap him in the early days of the Trump administration.
The accusations in Flynn’s lawsuit stemmed from a criminal case brought in December 2017 – during Trump’s first year in office. In the case, Flynn admitted to lying to the FBI about his interactions with the Russian ambassador at the time as well as lying in a Justice Department disclosure over his lobbying firm’s work for Turkey.
He agreed at the time to cooperate in the investigation, and helped special counsel Robert Mueller piece together several instances where it was later alleged Trump attempted to obstruct the investigation.
Just before he was set to be sentenced, though, Flynn asked to drop his guilty plea. The Justice Department later moved to drop the case against him and he was pardoned by Trump.
Separately, lawyers for Trump are engaged in discussions with the IRS and the Treasury Department in an effort to resolve his $10 billion lawsuit accusing the agencies of an unauthorized leak of his tax information during his first administration, CNN reported Friday.
This story has been updated with additional details.
The-CNN-Wire
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