Background
Aside from former President Donald Trump himself, no individual was more damaged by the unprecedented actions deliberately taken by top ranking FBI officials, including then-FBI Director James Comey, against then-Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in 2016.
The FBI used a bogus collection of stories provided by former British spy Christopher Steele and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (which she essentially controlled), as the basis for their application to the FISA Court for a FISA warrant (and for three subsequent renewals) to unlawfully spy on Page, and by extension, the Trump campaign.
In November 2020, the long-suffering Page, filed a lawsuit against the FBI, the DOJ, Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith and several others “to seek accountability and recover damages for the extraordinary and unprecedented actions of its employees in illegally spying on him, and for injunctive relief for DOJ’s denial of his rights under the Privacy Act.”
One of the more egregious offenses cited in the lawsuit was Clinesmith’s alteration of a CIA email to the FBI which had originally confirmed that Page had assisted the CIA between 2008 and 2013 in “combatting intelligence-related activities pursued by Russia and other foreign countries against the United States’ interest.”
Clinesmith pleaded guilty in August 2020 to falsifying this email to read that Page had not worked with the CIA. This was done, he admitted, to obtain a renewal of the FISA warrant.
Each of the defendants filed motions to dismiss Page’s case in September 2021.
Page Legal Team Files Opposition Motion
Late on Friday night, Page’s legal team, led by Leslie McAdoo Gordon, the principal at Washington D.C. law firm McAdoo Gordon & Associates, P.C., filed two documents with the D.C. district court, “Opposition to the Motions to Dismiss and for Partial Summary Judgment” and “Plaintiff’s Omnibus Opposition to Individual Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss.”
(Note: The lawsuit refers to the group of defendants collectively as “the Government.”)
According to this motion:
What makes this case so extraordinary is that the employees were not mere field agents bending the rules to pursue criminals, but rather the highest-level FBI executives colluding to subvert the foreign intelligence apparatus to illegally spy on Dr. Page, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and a loyal American.
The wholly unsupported and preposterous premise for this action was that Dr. Page a former CIA “operational contact” who had also helped the FBI to defeat spying attempts by Russia was now a foreign agent helping candidate Trump collude with Russia.
…
As a result of the illegal and arguably criminal actions of these employees, Dr. Page was subjected to a full year of unlawful surveillance based upon the known lie that he was a Russian agent.
But in addition to being the victim of secretive surveillance, the Government’s employees then publicly branded Dr. Page as a Russian agent and a traitor—thereby intentionally ruining his reputation by leaking the existence of the FISA Warrants and surveillance to the media. These were gross violations of Dr. Page’s rights, for which he is entitled to compensation and redress through this lawsuit.
Further, when the DOJ Inspector General prepared a report (the “Horowitz Report”) detailing the many abuses of the FISA warrant process in Dr. Page’s case, the agency denied Dr. Page his right under the Privacy Act to review and correct the references to him before that report was released to the public. Dr. Page seeks injunctive relief to remedy this wrong.
The motion notes that the Government “makes hyper-technical arguments about why it is not liable for its employees’ actions and why, even if it is liable, Dr. Page waited too long to sue.”
The Government argues that Page “doesn’t have a legal right to pursue access to the report that would provide him the first inklings as to how the historic FBI misconduct could occur …”
Predictably, the FBI and the DOJ are stonewalling. Respect for these institutions among Americans who closely followed the Trump/Russia collusion investigation is at an all-time low. Their admission to the charges contained in Page’s lawsuit would bring them down completely.
DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’ December 2019 report
Although DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz enumerated much of the FBI’s wrongdoing in his sensational December 2019 report, “Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation,” he is, at his core, a partisan.
The report lists one egregious deed after another, then tells us they were unintended.
He called the FBI official’s deliberate and nefarious behavior “mistakes.”
Horowitz concluded that the political bias of members of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane team had not influenced their decisions and actions when even a cursory look at the report provides enough material to justify criminal referrals for several of them.
Following the release of the report, former FBI Director James Comey announced he’d been exonerated.
Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page was so emboldened by Horowitz’s findings that she filed a lawsuit against the DOJ and the FBI claiming that, by releasing her text message exchanges with former lover and co-worker, FBI agent Peter Strzok, they violated the Privacy Act.
Yes, really.
Barr, Durham Publicly Reject Horowitz’ Conclusion
It’s important to remember the FBI’s claim that they opened this investigation on July 31, 2016, because word had recently reached them about a May 2016 comment made by then-junior Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer in a London bar – that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton.
Yet all the FBI’s activities prior to this time focused on Christopher Steele and his bogus reports. The dossier had allegedly been passed around Washington all summer long.
At any rate, immediately following the release of Horowitz’ report, then-Attorney General William Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham, whom he had appointed in May 2019 to conduct an administrative review into the origins of the Trump/Russia collusion investigation, publicly disagreed with Horowitz’ conclusion that the FBI had an adequate “predicate” for opening Crossfire Hurricane.
By that time, Durham’s administrative review had morphed into a criminal inquiry.
It appears that, to this day, Durham, whom Barr named a special counsel days after the November 2020 election, still isn’t buying the FBI’s version of events.
Durham’s arrests of two individuals at the heart of the hoax last fall signals that he is not finished. In September, he indicted Michael Sussmann, a cybersecurity attorney and former partner at the notorious Perkins, Coie law firm, for making a false statement to the FBI.
Sussmann’s name may be familiar because he represented the Democratic National Committee after they claimed their servers had been hacked in 2016. You may recall that the DNC refused to allow the FBI to examine their servers – ever.
Two months later, Durham arrested Ygor Danchenko, who was Christopher Steele’s primary sub-source for the dossier, for “repeatedly lying to the FBI about where and how he got his information.”
RealClearInvestigations published an exhaustive report last week written by journalist Aaron Maté entitled, “Durham vs. Horowitz: Tension Over Truth and Consequences Grips the FBI’s Trump-Russia Reckoning.” It’s a long haul, but it takes you through many of the details that have been forgotten over the past few years. Well worth it if you have the time.
Page’s Lawyers Conclusion
Simply put, the central question raised by the Individual Defendants in their Motions to Dismiss is whether they are, as individuals, responsible for the illegal and unconstitutional spying on Dr. Page. That central question was effectively answered by Defendant McCabe when he testified before the United States Senate in November 2020 about the FISA warrant applications.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC): Okay. The question is who’s responsible?
Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe: “[W]e are all responsible for the work that went into that FISA.”
Summing Up
“The Government” whom Page is up against will continue with their obstruction efforts for as long as they can. Ultimately, Page’s outcome may depend upon what Durham turns up which, given the length of his investigation – 32 months – will likely be substantial.
A red wave in November will also work in Page’s favor. If Republicans win back the White House in 2024 and a conservative FBI director takes over, all will be revealed.
Yes, it’s taking a long time. Following Danchenko’s arrest, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley wrote: “Durham is known as a methodical, apolitical and unrelenting prosecutor. … The question is whether Durham really wants to indict just the figurative tail if he can get the whole dog — a question that now may weigh heavily on a number of Washington figures.”
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