Amy Jeffress of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer, who is representing former FBI lawyer Lisa Page. (Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM)

Lisa Page, a former FBI lawyer who has been the target of Republican attacks over texts she exchanged about President Donald Trump, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the Department of Justice and FBI, alleging that agency officials violated the Privacy Act by leaking her text messages to reporters.

Page alleges that "officials who authorized the disclosure" of her text messages with then-FBI agent Peter Strzok "and their allies sought to use, and ultimately did use, the messages to promote the false narrative that Plaintiff and others at the FBI were biased against President Trump, had conspired to undermine him, and otherwise had engaged in allegedly criminal acts, including treason."

She is being represented by Amy Jeffress and Kaitlin Konkel of Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer. The firm is also representing former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe in his lawsuit against the Trump administration.

Jeffress is a prominent Washington, D.C., lawyer, who joined Arnold & Porter in 2014. She was set to be called as a defense witness in ex-Obama White House counsel Greg Craig's trial this summer but ultimately did not testify.

Page is seeking a jury trial, as well as a minimum of $1,000 in damages as permitted under the Privacy Act, attorneys' fees and costs and "such other relief as this Court deems just."

"I sued the Department of Justice and FBI today," Page tweeted Tuesday. "I take little joy in having done so. But what they did in leaking my messages to the press was not only wrong, it was illegal."

Tuesday's complaint alleges that Page's texts with Strzok, with whom she had an affair, were shared with a group of reporters "for multiple improper reasons, including to elevate DOJ's standing with the president following the president's repeated public attacks of the department and its head, Attorney General Jefferson B. Sessions III."

Page's attorneys wrote that the texts were revealed the night before then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein testified before Congress in December 2017, "and the department's failure to respond to congressional oversight requests before the hearing would open the door for Republican committee members to criticize Rosenstein and DOJ for failing to vigorously pursue what the members viewed as evidence of a 'witch hunt' against President Trump."

"Disclosure of the text messages before Rosenstein's hearing would serve multiple goals: it would protect the deputy attorney general from criticism during his testimony; it would show that the department was addressing matters of concern to the president; and it would dominate coverage of the hearing, which otherwise could be unfavorable for the department," the complaint states.

"And the department could achieve all of this at the relatively low cost (in the department's view) of the privacy of two FBI employees: Ms. Page, a longtime DOJ and FBI attorney, and Mr. Strzok, a career FBI agent," it continues.

It further alleges that DOJ officials, including then-spokesperson Sarah Isgur Flores, would not allow reporters to source the messages back to the agency, "so that the department could pretend that the reporters had obtained the messages from Congress and plausibly deny having invited reporters to the department to view them."

The lawsuit also points to the release of a report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz on Monday, which determined that while there were errors in how the FBI conducted its probe into Trump, it was not launched due to any bias against him.

Page discussed the disclosure of the text messages in an interview with The Daily Beast last week, her first public remarks since she left the FBI last year. She criticized the Justice Department for allowing reporters to review "a cherry-picked selection of my text messages" ahead of Rosenstein's congressional testimony.

And Page said she didn't view her texts with Strzok as being violations of the Hatch Act, which block employees like her from public partisan and political acts. Those texts include one where she asks Strzok for reassurance that Trump wouldn't win the presidency, and Strzok replied, "No. No he's not. We'll stop it."

Page's affair and texts with Strzok made national headlines, as both worked on special counsel Robert Mueller's probe at one point. Republicans seized on their texts to fuel claims of an anti-Trump bias at the U.S. Department of Justice and FBI.

Page's lawsuit Tuesday alleges that she has suffered "severe harm" as a result of the texts being released, including dozens of attacks from Trump himself.

Mueller removed Strzok from his team after the texts with Page were uncovered, and the agent was eventually fired from the FBI.

Strzok also filed a lawsuit in August against the Justice Department, FBI and top agency leaders challenging his firing from the federal government over the texts with Page.

"The campaign to fire Strzok included constant tweets and other disparaging statements by the president, as well as direct appeals from the president to then-Attorney General Jefferson Sessions and FBI Director Christopher Wray to fire Strzok, which were chronicled in the press," Strzok's attorneys at Zuckerman Spaeder and Heller, Huron, Chertkof & Salzman wrote in the complaint.

Read the lawsuit: