Allegra Kirkland contributed reporting.
A New York judge dismissed former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page’s defamation suit against Yahoo News’ parent company Tuesday.
Page filed a lawsuit against Oath Inc. in September 2017, claiming a Yahoo News article damaged his business relationships and led to threats against him. A federal judge on Tuesday said the lawsuit lacked factual accusations of defamation, according to the court documents.
When reached for comment, Page pointed TPM to a tweet on his recently created account blaming “slick lawyers” for derailing his lawsuit and promising to file an amended complaint.
Similar to the slick maneuvers by Comey & McCabe in the FISC over recent years, clever lawyers for powerful entities often manage to briefly pull the wool over the eyes of busy District Court Judges. My future updated Complaint will shine an honest light and help restore justice.
— Carter Page, Ph.D. (@carterwpage) March 21, 2018
In Page’s 400-page complaint, in which he sued several media outlets for defamation, Page claimed that a September 2016 Yahoo News article was the beginning of a onslaught of stories about his past work in Russia and his contacts with Kremlin-linked officials during the 2016 campaign. The Yahoo article outlined a trip Page made to Moscow in July 2016, during which he allegedly met with senior Russian officials, such as Igor Sechin, an associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the chairman of Russia’s biggest oil company and Igor Divyekin, a top Putin aide.
Page has denied those reports.
Page represented himself in the lawsuit — as he did during hours of congressional testimony over his contacts with Russia — and was seeking $75,000 in damages.
Read the response to Page’s lawsuit below:
So.Much.Not.Winning.
Of course he did. After his multiple media appearances we would expect nothing less.
A second-year law student could have drafted the motion to dismiss on this one. Not even close.
It’s not “defaming” when someone reports on someone else’s activities. If anyone has defamed Carter Page, it’s the guy he sees in the mirror every morning.