Politics

Former Trump Campaign Adviser Identified In Dossier Sues Yahoo! News

(YouTube screen grab/CNN)

Chuck Ross Investigative Reporter
Font Size:

Carter Page, a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, filed a defamation lawsuit against the parent company of Yahoo! News and The Huffington Post on Thursday over articles published alleging collusion with the Kremlin last year.

The focus of the suit, filed in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York against Yahoo’s parent, Oath Inc., is a Sept. 23, 2016, article published by veteran political reporter Michael Isikoff.

The core allegations in the article appear to have been provided to Isikoff by Christopher Steele, the former British spy who authored the now-infamous Trump dossier.

The article, entitled “U.S. Intel Officials Probe Ties Between Trump Adviser and Kremlin,” stated that U.S. intelligence officials were “seeking to determine whether an American businessman identified by Donald Trump as one of his foreign policy advisers has opened up private communications with senior Russian officials.”

Isikoff’s report cited intelligence reports that had been shared with U.S. officials which alleged that Page met in Moscow last July with Page met with Igor Sechin, an associate of Vladimir Putin’s and the CEO of Russian oil giant, Rosneft, and another Putin aide named Igor Diveykin.

Isikoff’s sources said that Page, who did travel to Moscow at that time to give a commencement speech at the New Economic School, may have discussed the removal of sanctions with Sechin and Diveykin.

The reporter’s information came from “a well-placed Western intelligence source,” he wrote.

Isikoff also reported that U.S. investigators and members of Congress had learned of Page’s alleged meeting. Then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid had been briefed on the claims about Page and in turn contacted then-FBI Director James Comey.

It has since been revealed that Isikoff met with Steele, the dossier author.

Steele’s document contains the same allegations about Page that are found in Isikoff’s report. Steele has also disclosed in court filings in England, where he operates his private intelligence firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, that he met with reporters from a slew of news outlets to discuss the dossier, including Yahoo!, Mother Jones, The New York Times and CNN.

Steele stated that he was directed to hold those meetings by Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm who hired him last June to investigate Trump’s ties to Russia. Fusion was working for an ally of Hillary Clinton’s.

But Page, a Manhattan-based energy consultant, vehemently denies the core allegations made in the dossier and in Isikoff’s report.

Yahoo! News “published a highly misleading article filled with false allegations,” the 46-year-old Page writes in the suit.

He called publication of the article “perhaps the most dangerous, reckless, irresponsible and historically-instrumental moments in modern-day sensations crime story journalism.”

He also accuses Steele and his intelligence firm of spreading an “extensive array of completely false, misrepresented and/or unverified information.”

Page states in the complaint that he “has never met” with Sechin and Diveykin, the two Russians he allegedly met with during his July trip to Moscow.

He has also “never met or personally spoken with” Trump.

Oath Inc. is not the only media company to be sued by figures mentioned in the Steele dossier. A Russian tech executive named Aleksej Gubarev sued BuzzFeed News in February for publishing the dossier. Steele’s final entry in the dossier alleges that Gubarev used computer viruses and bots to hack the emails of the Democratic National Committee. Gubarev has vehemently denied the allegation and is suing BuzzFeed for publishing the dossier. He’s also suing Steele in London.

Follow Chuck on Twitter

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel