The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday turned away an appeal from Carter Page, an adviser to President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, that sought to revive legal claims accusing former FBI officials of illegally obtaining warrants to monitor him during the bureau's probe into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Page filed the lawsuit in 2020, contending he was subjected to unlawful surveillance while serving as a volunteer on an informal foreign policy advisory committee for the Trump campaign. Federal authorities obtained four warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to intercept Page's communications as part of the investigation.
Several elements of Page’s complaint were resolved earlier by a partial settlement in which the Trump administration agreed to pay a reported $1.25 million to conclude claims Page had brought against the government. That settlement left outstanding claims that targeted a number of former FBI officials, including former Director James Comey, ex-deputy Andrew McCabe and Kevin Clinesmith, the FBI lawyer who pleaded guilty to altering an email that had been used to seek court authorization to surveil Page.
Subsequent reviews by the Justice Department’s inspector general found significant problems in the FBI’s applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. The inspector general released its principal report on the matter in 2019, during President Trump’s first term, concluding that the FBI made numerous errors in the warrant applications.
Page was never criminally charged and has repeatedly denied any improper contacts or ties to Russia. After lower courts dismissed remaining portions of his lawsuit, Page sought review by the Supreme Court.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2025 affirmed a lower court ruling that dismissed Page’s case on the basis that it was filed after the applicable statute of limitations had run. The D.C. Circuit concluded that Page’s surveillance claim was governed by a three-year statute of limitations that began when he reasonably became aware of the surveillance, which the appeals court traced to an April 2017 Washington Post article describing the operation.
In asking the Supreme Court to take the case, Page argued that the limitations period should not have been measured from the publication of an anonymously sourced news story. Instead, he contended, the clock should have started when the government acknowledged that it had conducted unlawful surveillance of him.
By declining to review the appeal, the Supreme Court left intact the lower courts’ determinations that Page’s remaining claims are time-barred. The decision ends his request for further judicial relief on those particular legal theories in the federal courts.
Context and legal posture
The litigation has proceeded in stages: a partial government settlement resolved some claims, while the remaining claims against individual former officials were dismissed by lower courts on statute-of-limitations grounds. Inspector general findings that the FBI’s FISA applications contained numerous errors are part of the factual record on which Page based his allegations, and a former FBI lawyer has pleaded guilty to altering a document used in a warrant application.
What remains clear from the court record
- Page’s suit asserted he was targeted by an FBI surveillance program while affiliated with the Trump campaign advisory effort.
- The FBI obtained four Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court warrants to surveil Page during its probe.
- The inspector general’s 2019 report identified multiple errors in those warrant applications.
- Page was not charged and denies improper ties to Russia.
- A partial settlement with the government reportedly paid $1.25 million to resolve some of Page’s claims.