(FreedomBeacon.com)- On Thursday, a district court in the United States threw out Carter Page’s case, which alleged that the FBI had illegally spied on Page while he was working for the Trump campaign.
During the 2016 presidential election, Page acted as an unofficial advisor for the campaign of former President Donald Trump. In its investigation of alleged ties between the campaign and the government of Russia, the FBI obtained four Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants to surveil him electronically. However, his lawsuit against the United States, the Justice Department (DOJ), the FBI, and some of its former personnel labeled the warrant applications as “false and misleading,” according to U.S. officials. District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich handed down the judgment.
The FISA petitions relied heavily on reporting from a former British spy named Christopher Steele. Steele’s infamous “Steele Dossier” accused Page of involvement in a plot between Russia and the Trump campaign to influence the 2016 election.
According to Politico, Friedrich stated on Thursday that Page could not lawfully sue former FBI Director James Comey, former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith, or any of the other individual defendants for the monitoring because they did not physically do it. She concluded that his complaint did not have any “actionable claim against any individual defendant or the United States.”
An “operational contact” for the CIA, Page served as an “operational contact” for the CIA until 2013. Page provided personnel insight into intelligence targets. According to Politico, Friedrich ruled that the “troubling” allegations of misconduct and lying in the process of monitoring Page failed to warrant a civil suit.
According to The Associated Press, Clinesmith entered a guilty plea in 2020 for the crime of modifying an email in which he denied that Page was a source for the CIA, even though, according to the allegations, he believed his statement to be accurate. The email was being used as supporting evidence for one of the applications that the FBI had submitted to monitor Page.
