Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page sued the Justice Department, the FBI and multiple officials involved in Crossfire Hurricane on Friday for $75 million, saying that he was the victim of “unlawful spying” as part of the government’s investigation of the Trump campaign, several press accounts report.
The suit was filed in federal court in Washington D.C. on Friday. Page argues that investigators violated “his Constitutional and other legal rights in connection with unlawful surveillance and investigation of him by the United States Government.” It asserts that he was targetted “because of his lawful association with the 2016 Presidential campaign of Donald Trump.”
The filing quotes the DOJ IG report which said the FBI made at least 17 “significant” errors in applications submitted to the FISA Court. It names James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, Kevin Clinesmith, Joseph Pientka, Stephen Somma and Brian Auten.
“In reality, there was no ‘probable cause’ to support surveillance of Dr. Page,” the lawsuit says. “If the FBI had fully and accurately reported what it knew, the FISA warrants against Dr. Page would neither have been sought nor issued.”
The New York Post notes that Auten and Somma took part in interviews in January 2017 with Igor Danchenko, the analyst at Brookings who was Steele’s primary source of information for the dossier, adding that “Danchenko told the investigators that he did not verify the information he provided Steele and instead presented the ex-spy with rumor and hearsay he had collected from sources in Russia..... Somma, who works out of the New York field office, was the handler for Stefan Halper, a longtime FBI source who met with and secretly recorded Page during several meetings in 2016 and 2017.”
