Former 2016 Trump campaign adviser Carter Page has filed a massive lawsuit against the U.S. government as well as agencies and individuals responsible for illegally spying on him using Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act orders.
What are the details?
The Federalist reported Friday that Page is seeking “no less than $75 million from the U.S. government, the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigations,” and individuals involved with Operation Crossfire Hurricane, including fired FBI Director James Comey, fired assistant director Andrew McCabe, fired FBI deputy assistant director of counterintelligence Peter Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page.
The complaint argues, in part:
The FBI did not have probably cause to lawfully obtain a FISA warrant [against Dr. Page]. Instead, the FBI used documents furnished by Christopher Steele, a Confidential Human Source (“CHS”). As the Crossfire Hurricane team knew, CHS Steele has been paid by the Democratic Party and/or the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign to perform “political opposition research” and dig up dirt on a connection between the Trump campaign and Russia in order to divert attention from the investigation of Clinton’s email practices while she was Secretary of State.
Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz released a report last year detailing problems found in the FISA process after investigating the FBI’s probe into President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.
As TheBlaze previously reported:
The report also notes “17 significant errors” in the Carter Page FISA applications and “many additional errors” in the procedures that guide the FISA process. “These errors and omissions resulted from case agents providing wrong or incomplete information to OI [the Office of Intelligence] and failing to flag important issues for discussion,” the report notes.
Following the release of Howoritz’s findings, chief FISA Judge Rosemary Collyer issued a scathing rebuke of the FBI’s handling of applications to spy and surveil Page, saying that other FISA applications now fall under question, writing: “The frequency with which representations made by FBI personnel turned out to be unsupported or contradicted by information in their possession, and with which they withheld information detrimental to their case, calls into question whether information contained in other FBI applications is reliable.”
The Washington Examiner pointed out that Carter Page was never charged with any wrongdoing. The outlet further noted that McCabe signed off on the final FISA application to surveil Page.
Strzok and Lisa Page — former lovers whose anti-Trump text messages to one another fed speculation that Crossfire Hurricane was politically motivated — were key members of the probe. Both of them have also sued the FBI since leaving the agency.
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