Court tosses Carter Page's lawsuit against Clinton legal team

Carter Page

A lawsuit by former Trump campaign aide Carter Page against the legal team that took part in the creation and manipulation of the now-debunked Steele Dossier assault on the successful Republican candidate during the 2016 presidential race has been dismissed on a technicality.

But the Supreme Court may yet have to rule on the question.

The decision from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was obtained and posted online by Just the News.

Page alleged defamation by the lawyers at Perkins Coie, a longtime Hillary Clinton asset whose members helped her campaign fund the dossier of wild allegations and claims about then-candidate Trump that have since been revealed to have been, essentially, fabricated.

The legal team claimed that since some of its partners “live” in China, it is protected from being sued under the federal courts’ diversity standards, and the appeals court agreed.

But the court noted, according to the report, the claims against Perkins Coie may not be ended.

“The appellate judges acknowledged the legal theory of federal court immunity for ‘stateless’ entities was novel and based on laws created before the rise of multinational corporations and it may be ripe for review by the U.S. Supreme Court,” the report said.

Specifically, the court ruled, “We acknowledge that in today’s global business environment, where multinational entities exist in every facet of commerce, this result may strike some as impractical. But keep in mind that when Congress enacted the Judiciary Act of 1789, and in the subsequent decades when the Supreme Court decided many of its significant diversity jurisdiction cases, most of today’s business forms did not exist.”

It continued, “The Supreme Court has not explicitly answered this question. But the court has held both that a stateless citizen cannot be sued in diversity (see Newman-Green, 490 U.S. at 828–29) and that the citizenship of a partnership is based on the citizenship of each individual partner.”

Perkins Coie claimed immunity based on its claims some of its partners are “domiciled” in China.

Those individuals are Yun Lu, Scott Palmer, and James M. Zimmerman, all of whom joined the company after its handling of the dossier assembled by an ex-agent for the British government.

Just the News reported Page confirmed he would continue the fight because he believes the Clinton-funded dossier was improper foreign interference in the U.S. election.

“Reminiscent of the rigorous years of work by leaders on Capitol Hill and DOJ’s Inspector General who originally uncovered the wrongdoing behind the Steele Dossier, this has remained a long road toward resolving perhaps the worst election interference and intelligence scandals in U.S. history,” Page said.

“I greatly appreciate this latest rigorous analysis by one of the most respected federal appellate courts in America, as they cogently highlighted these serious unresolved questions of law,” he added. “I will continue doing everything in my power to eventually achieve justice in this important matter.”

Clinton and her Democrat contingent of assets created the dossier during the 2016 election in an attempt to smear Donald Trump. Some of its allegation simply cannot be proven or disproven, but the claims that could have been supported by evidence simply were not.

It was the law firm that hired consulting firm Fusion GPS, which hired Steele, who consulted his Russian sources and created the dossier.

The Daily Caller earlier said a book claimed Barack Obama also hired Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential candidate.

“The Obama campaign hid its payments to Fusion GPS through its law firm, Perkins Coie. The arrangement is similar to the one that the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee used to pay Fusion for its investigation of then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016,” the report said.

It was “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on American and Donald Trump’s Election” by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, that made the allegation.

The faked information in the Steele Dossier later was used by the Obama administration to launch a federal investigation of Trump associates, including Page.

WND columnist, Lt. Col. James Zumwalt, questioned whether the FBI missed important indicators about GPS.

“After being hired by a Democratic campaign lawyer, Fusion became the conduit for a fake anti-Trump dossier. Fusion subcontracted with retired British MI-6 officer Christopher Steele to conduct the investigation – one ultimately triggering surveillance of Trump’s presidential campaign due to an unwarranted FISA warrant based on Fusion’s report.”

He explained, “It should be clear both from the work Fusion did for Planned Parenthood and for Hillary in producing an anti-Trump dossier, its role has been that of a hired gun. Apparently, a client need only tell Fusion what findings it desires and the agency will then create a report substantiating them. What appears not to stand in Fusion’s way – or, for that matter, in the way of its paying clients – is truth. With the wave of a magic wand, Fusion became an expert in the field a client desired – the magic wand being money. It seems a perfect match – a client seeks to buy damaging untruths and Fusion seeks to create them, package them up and sell them.”

Defense lawyers in Page’s legal action earlier claimed the debunked Steele Dossier is essentially “true.”

A year ago, the lawyers claimed, “Here, the ‘gist’ of the complained-of statements — that Page coordinated with Russian government contacts as an adviser to the Trump campaign — aligns with Page’s own description of his conduct. Page’s own allegations demonstrate the substantial truth of statements that Page traveled to Russia and met with associates of the Russian government. Plaintiffs’ defamation claims should be dismissed based on that basis alone.”

The Obama administration’s actions under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act were documented by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz in a report.

Horowitz found the Obama administration was guilty of 17 “significant omissions and errors” in the process of obtaining four warrants to spy on Page.

After the release of the Horowitz report the Justice Department told the FISA court it believed the final two spy warrants issued by the court against Page were “invalid.”

Horowitz criticized Steele in his report, concluding FBI meetings with Steele’s sources “raised significant questions about the reliability of the Steele election reporting.”

The creation of claims against the Trump campaign and its workers remains under investigation even now by a special federal prosecutor.

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This article was originally published by the WND News Center.

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