Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page is suing the Democratic National Committee over its commissioning of the infamous and largely discredited Steele dossier, which the FBI used to obtain warrants to surveil him during the 2016 election cycle.
Page filed a lawsuit Thursday in federal court in Illinois against the DNC as well as the law firm Perkins Coie and its partners, who contracted opposition research firm Fusion GPS to compile the the dossier on the DNC’s behalf. The suit accuses the defendants of pursuing a “political agenda” by using “false information, misrepresentations and other misconduct to direct the power of the international intelligence apparatus and the media industry against” Page.
“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,” Page’s 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.”
The dossier, which contained allegations that then-candidate Donald Trump conspired with Russia as well along side salacious details about his personal life, was a “central and essential” piece of the FBI’s application to procure multiple warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court to surveil Page.
The largely uncorroborated report was compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who was investigating Trump for an opposition research firm hired by the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, with law firm Perkins Coie as a funding middle man.
“This is only the first salvo. We will follow the evidence wherever it leads, no matter how high,” Pierce added. “The rule of law will prevail.”
Last month, the Justice Department’s inspector general concluded that the FBI omitted crucial details in its requests for warrants to surveil Page and neglected to inform the FISA Court that the dossier was unreliable.
The FBI found Steele’s information about a Russian government connection to be dubious but declined to mention as much in the later applications to the FISA court for warrants to surveil Page.