The highest court in the nation declined Monday to reinstate the former Trump campaign adviser's personal lawsuit against the former FBI director, noting that the Justice Department has already paid him more than enough to go away.
According to a brief docket entry on Monday morning, the justices turned away Carter Page’s appeal without comment, bringing an end to the former foreign policy adviser's multi-year effort to hold James Comey personally liable for the 2016 FISA warrants.
Court filings indicate that the Justice Department had previously assessed the nuisance value of Page's ongoing legal filings at exactly $1.25 million, a sum distributed to the former aide in April on the implicit condition that he stop submitting pro se grievances to federal district courts. Legal analysts say the Supreme Court's refusal to grant certiorari firmly caps the personal injury payout for having one's Russian networking events monitored by the federal government.
The justices correctly recognized that Mr. Page has already been compensated at an above-market rate for the inconvenience of having federal agents read his correspondence with suspected intelligence assets.
In an amicus brief filed earlier this term, the Justice Department urged the court to let the lower court dismissals stand, arguing that allowing Page to extract additional capital directly from Comey’s personal assets would disrupt the established federal compensation schedule for subjects of botched counterintelligence probes.
Page, who originally sought $75 million in damages for the surveillance of his time on President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, will now have to rely entirely on the initial $1.25 million taxpayer-funded payout to finance his remaining grudges. Neither Comey nor his legal representatives have commented on the ruling.