The Supreme Court declined to revive a lawsuit Carter Page, a former aide for President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, brought against former FBI officials, including former Director James Comey, over the government’s secret spying on him as part of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation.
The high court did not elaborate on its decision not to take up the case in its orders list released Monday. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson did not take part in the consideration of the case, as she was originally assigned it in 2020 while serving on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, before she was elevated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in 2021 and to the Supreme Court in 2022. The Supreme Court’s decision not to take up Page’s appeal comes months after the Department of Justice settled the lawsuit against the government agencies named in the suit for $1.25 million.
Page filed the lawsuit in 2020 against the DOJ, FBI, and various former FBI officials, including Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, and Lisa Page, alleging that the “unlawful spying” he alleges they conducted was predicated on the discredited Steele dossier to investigate alleged ties between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia. The investigation did not find ties between Trump and Russia, and its basis has largely been discredited as documents related to it have been declassified.
While the case in federal district court was originally assigned to Jackson, it was ultimately decided by a different federal judge, who tossed the lawsuit. U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Trump appointee, ruled in 2022 that Page could sue the persons who did the spying, but not the people who authorized the allegedly unlawful spying. A federal appeals court upheld the decision to dismiss the lawsuit, and the Supreme Court’s Monday decision means it is dead.
The Supreme Court declined to take up Page’s lawsuit, rejecting dozens of other cases petitioned to the high court on Monday. In its orders list, the high court announced three cases it would take up for arguments in its upcoming term. One of the three cases the high court said it would take up deals with whether the government may indefinitely detain criminal immigrants pending removal proceedings, or if those criminal immigrants are due a bond hearing if the detention becomes “unreasonably prolonged.”
THE MAJOR SUPREME COURT DECISIONS REMAINING FOR THIS TERM
The high court has currently announced 14 cases it will hear for arguments in its upcoming term, which will begin in October, but is expected to add dozens of cases to that list in the coming months.
The Supreme Court’s current term is expected to conclude by the end of the month, once the justices release the remaining opinions in the 20 cases in which they heard arguments but have yet to decide. Some of the most closely watched cases awaiting a ruling include legal challenges to Trump’s firing ability, a pair of state laws barring biological males from women’s sports, and laws allowing late-arriving mail ballots to be counted.