The Supreme Court on Monday declined to revive a lawsuit by former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page against ex-FBI Director James Comey and other former government officials over surveillance warrants obtained during the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
The justices denied Page’s appeal without explanation, leaving lower court rulings in place, Fox News reports. The decision effectively ends Page’s years-long effort to hold individual officials personally liable for what he alleged was unlawful surveillance of an American citizen who was never charged with any crime.
Page served as a foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Starting in 2016 and continuing into 2017, the FBI obtained secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrants authorizing surveillance of Page as part of its investigation into alleged ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.
A Justice Department inspector general review later found significant errors and omissions in the FBI’s warrant applications. Former FBI and DOJ officials who signed off on those applications said afterward they would not have approved them had they known the full scope of the problems identified by investigators.
Page was never charged with any crime. He has consistently denied acting as a Russian agent.
The FBI implemented dozens of corrective measures following the inspector general’s findings, but no senior official involved in the surveillance applications faced criminal conviction.
Page sued Comey and other former officials, alleging they violated his constitutional rights by submitting the flawed warrant applications. Federal courts dismissed the case. Among the reasons: Page had not named the specific officials who directly carried out the surveillance.
He separately reached a $1.25 million settlement with the federal government over the surveillance claims. That agreement did not cover his pursuit of individual officials.
The Supreme Court offered no explanation for turning away the appeal, consistent with standard practice when rejecting cert petitions.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson did not participate in the case.
The ruling closes a legal chapter that began with one of the most scrutinized domestic surveillance operations in recent memory. The Crossfire Hurricane investigation examined whether members of Trump’s 2016 campaign coordinated with Russian efforts to influence the election. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report concluded that Russia interfered in the election but did not establish that campaign members criminally conspired with Moscow.
