Carter Page, a former adviser to President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, reached a settlement with the Justice Department that resolves his lawsuit over claims that he was secretly surveilled during the FBI’s Russia investigation. The settlement was disclosed to the Supreme Court while Page’s case was still on appeal, and the government filing did not include the dollar amount. A person familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity to discuss non-public information, said the settlement was for $1.25 million.
Page had filed the lawsuit in 2020, asserting that he was the target of “unlawful spying” conducted by an FBI agency during the period when investigators pursued whether Trump’s 2016 campaign conspired with Russia to affect the election. Page’s suit alleged that officials made a series of omissions and errors in applications submitted in 2016 and 2017 seeking approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to eavesdrop on him.
Page denied improper ties to Russia and was never charged with any wrongdoing in connection with the Russia investigation. After lower courts dismissed his suit, appellate judges said he waited too long to file his complaint, prompting him to appeal to the Supreme Court.
While Page’s appeal was pending, the Trump administration notified the Supreme Court on Wednesday that it had reached a settlement with Page covering his claims against the federal government. The settlement does not address Page’s separate claims against former FBI officials that he had also sued.
The litigation followed a Justice Department inspector general report that was sharply critical of surveillance related to the Russia probe. The inspector general report found significant problems with the four applications used to obtain surveillance authority, and some former FBI and Justice Department leaders involved in signing off on the requests said they would not have approved them if they had known the full extent of the issues.
The FBI has said it initiated more than 40 corrective steps intended to improve the accuracy and thoroughness of FISA applications after problems were identified. Despite the inspector general’s findings about the warrant applications in Page’s case, the surveillance scrutiny of Page was described as only a narrow part of the broader investigation into links between the Trump campaign and Russia.
In the underlying Russia probe, special counsel Robert Mueller concluded that Russia interfered on Trump’s behalf during the 2016 campaign and that the campaign welcomed the assistance, but Mueller’s team said it did not find sufficient evidence to establish a criminal conspiracy between the campaign and Russia.
The settlement comes after the Justice Department in March reached a separate agreement with another figure from the Trump-Russia matter, Michael Flynn. In that earlier deal, the government reached a roughly $1.2 million settlement with Flynn, the former Trump national security adviser, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about conversations with a top Russian diplomat and was later pardoned.