Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page has filed a lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the law firm Perkins Coie for funding the fraudulent dossier that served as the basis for illegal surveillance warrants against him.
“The Defendants are private actors who used false information, misrepresentations and other misconduct to direct the power of the international intelligence apparatus and the media industry against a private individual, Plaintiff Carter Page, to further their political agenda,” the complaint states.
“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,” attorney John Pierce said Thursday. “Defendants and those they worked with inside the federal government did not and will not succeed in making America a surveillance state.”
Perkins Coie was used by the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign to secretly pay opposition research firm Fusion GPS and former British intelligence operative Christopher Steele to concoct a dossier with unverified rumors alleging Trump and Moscow were colluding to hijack the 2016 presidential election.
The dossier alleges that Page was an agent of the Russian government, and acted as an “intermediary” between former Trump Campaign manager Paul Manafort and Moscow. It further alleges that Igor Sechin, the CEO of Russia’s state oil company, offered Page and his associates a stake in the company in exchange for the lifting of US sanctions on Russia.
None of that was true, but the FBI used the unverified rumors to obtain the FISA warrants to spy on Page.
At least one lawyer from Perkins Coie met with former FBI general counsel James Baker to talk about the allegations before the bureau secured the first search warrant in October of 2016.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz released his long-awaited IG report on December 9, identifying 17 separate inaccuracies throughout the four Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) applications that were submitted to the FISA court to justify the spying.
Horowitz found that the warrants were riddled with “material misstatements and omissions,” and the FBI knowingly withheld exculpatory information in their surveillance applications.
In a December letter to the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court made public last week, the Justice Department officially determined that at least half of the FBI’s four FISA applications were illegal.
Now that Page has been fully vindicated, he has hired Pierce, the global managing partner of Pierce Bainbridge Beck Price & Hecht LLP, to represent him, according to Fox News.
They filed in Illinois because they allege the relationship with the firm behind the dossier, Fusion GPS, was “orchestrated” through law firm Perkins Coie’s Chicago office. The suit also claims the DNC “has a historical pattern” of making Chicago its principal place of business.
Pierce called the suit the first in a “campaign to restore Dr. Page’s name and hold those who targeted him accountable.”
This is not Page’s first attempt to sue the DNC and Perkins Coie.
In October 2018, the DNC’s fall guy filed a defamation suit on his own against the same parties in federal court in Oklahoma, but that suit was thrown out in January 2019. The judge ruled that the court lacked jurisdiction because neither Page nor the DNC had strong ties to the state.
Page’s legal team filed in Illinois because they allege the relationship with the firm behind the dossier, Fusion GPS, was “orchestrated” through law firm Perkins Coie’s Chicago office. The suit also claims the DNC “has a historical pattern” of making Chicago its principal place of business.
Pierce called the suit the first in a “campaign to restore Dr. Page’s name and hold those who targeted him accountable.”
Page’s lawsuit does not specify the amount sought, instead seeking “compensatory, special and punitive damages in appropriate amounts to be established at trial.”The suit alleges that the DNC, Perkins Coie and partners Marc Elias and Michael Sussman “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.”
The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of Illinois’ Eastern Division Thursday morning, and was described by his attorneys as the “first of multiple actions in the wake of historic” Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuse.
Page’s lawyer said Thursday: “This is only the first salvo. We will follow the evidence wherever it leads, no matter how high. … The rule of law will prevail.”
Page himself told American Greatness Friday morning: “Unfortunately like many Republicans in the U.S. Congress have learned and all Americans have eventually come to understand post-IG report, there are obviously a lot of open questions and controversies stemming from the FISA abuse which people have been grappling with for years.”