Carter Page Argues for Another Shot in Defamation, Terrorism Suit Against Yahoo Parent Company
Page, an ex-adviser to the 2016 Trump campaign, who said he is studying for a master of laws degree, instead appealed the ruling to the Second Circuit, arguing in part that he was denied a fair chance to have his claims heard.
November 22, 2019 at 04:48 PM
4 minute read
Carter Page, the former foreign policy adviser to President Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign, asked a Manhattan federal appeals court Friday to revive his terrorism and defamation claims against Yahoo News parent company Oath Inc. stemming from a 2016 article that claimed U.S. Intelligence officials were probing his possible ties with Russian officials.
Appearing pro se before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Page said the Yahoo article, which was republished by Huffington Post, had forced him into hiding, disrupted his business opportunities and violated the Anti-Terrorism Act by inspiring death threats against him. The Huffington Post, like Yahoo, is owned by Oath.
"My life has never been the same," he said during oral arguments Friday morning.
U.S. District Judge Lorna Schofield of the Southern District of New York last March found that the terrorism claim failed as a matter of law and dismissed the rest of the suit on jurisdictional grounds. She also noted that the complaint incorrectly had targeted Oath and not the two news organizations that actually published the articles.
In the ruling, Schofield said that "any effort to replead a federal claim against Oath or its subsidiaries would be futile," and directed him to file a letter with the court if he wished to amend it.
Page, who said he is studying for a master of laws degree, instead appealed the ruling to the Second Circuit, arguing in part that he was denied a fair chance to have his claims heard.
"The denial of leave to amend is the biggest issue today, among many," he told the panel, which consisted of Trump appointees Judges Richard Sullivan and Michael Park of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, as well as Judge Amalya Kearse of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, who was appointed to the court by President Jimmy Carter in 1979.
Page also cited to a forthcoming report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, which is purported to say that a lawyer with the Federal Bureau of Investigations was suspected of altering a document related to a 2016 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant to monitor Page's communications.
"There's much more to come, and I was hoping to be able to add this," he said.
David Parker, who represented Oath, called Page's appeal "frivolous on its face" and said the "publication of a news article is just simply not an act of terrorism."
Assistant U.S. attorney Stephen Seungkun Cha-Kim, speaking on behalf of co-defendant the Broadcasting Board of Governors, briefly added that the claims were "meritless for a long list of reasons."
Speaking with reporters after the hearing, Page said he was "very encouraged" by the arguments.
"There was a lot of additional potential claims, which I had defined, and unfortunately I was very limited," he said. "If you look at the laws of this court and of the Supreme Court, definitely within that precedent I think there's definitely a great reason for a remand."
The panel did not indicate when it expected to rule on Page's appeal.
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