The Justice Department has settled a long-running lawsuit brought by Carter Page, a former foreign policy adviser to President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, in a case tied to secret surveillance conducted during the FBI’s Russia investigation. Page’s lawsuit challenged the legality of the surveillance and faulted the government’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court applications for omissions and errors, while Page denied any improper ties to Russia and said he was the target of “unlawful spying.”
The settlement resolves Page’s claims against the federal government, with the amount described as $1.25 million in court-related information discussed by the Associated Press. The figure was not disclosed in the Supreme Court filing itself, which the AP said contained the settlement announcement while Page’s appeal was still pending.
Page had filed his lawsuit in 2020 after he said he was subjected to surveillance during the period when federal investigators examined whether Trump’s campaign conspired with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election. Page said the applications submitted by FBI and Justice Department officials in 2016 and 2017 included inaccuracies and missing information, according to the allegations described by the AP.
Page’s case also ran into limits on timing. Lower courts had dismissed his suit after appellate judges said he waited too long to file his complaint, and he then appealed to the Supreme Court. As that appeal moved forward, the Trump administration informed the Supreme Court on Wednesday that the parties had reached a settlement, the Associated Press reported.
The settlement did not cover everything Page had sought, the AP said. The Supreme Court filing did not include a dollar figure but indicated the settlement did not address claims Page made against former FBI officials he also sued, according to the AP’s summary of what the court paperwork meant.
The underlying allegations were tied to the FBI’s Russia investigation, which included efforts to obtain warrants through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Page’s lawsuit followed what the AP described as a critical Justice Department inspector general report that found significant problems with four surveillance applications used to justify the monitoring.
The AP reported that former FBI and Justice Department leaders who signed off on the surveillance later said they would not have approved the applications had they known the extent of the problems. The FBI also said it had initiated more than 40 corrective steps aimed at improving the accuracy and thoroughness of applications, even while acknowledging that the inspector general found issues in the past warrant requests.
Although the inspector general’s concerns focused on the surveillance applications at issue in Page’s case, the scrutiny described by the AP represented only a narrow part of a larger investigation. The AP said a separate inquiry led by 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 enough evidence to prove a criminal conspiracy between the campaign and Russia.
The Justice Department’s settlement with Page also comes after a separate resolution earlier in 2026 involving another figure from the same broader Russia-investigation era. In March, the AP reported, the Justice Department settled a different lawsuit with Michael Flynn, the former Trump national security adviser, for roughly $1.2 million, following Flynn’s guilty plea for lying to the FBI and later presidential pardon.