Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page is trying really, really hard to keep things going in the defamation case he brought against the Democratic National Committee, the law firm Perkins Coie, and two of the firm’s attorneys. The problem, of course, is that a judge dismissed the case about two weeks ago. Nevertheless, Page persists.
Chief Judge Joe Heaton of the Western District of Oklahoma said in no uncertain terms that his court did not have jurisdiction over the matter, because Page had not made any allegations that the defendants or their actions had anything to do with the state. After this, Page submitted a court filing purporting to provide evidence of an Oklahoma connection that he did not include in his complaint. Page claimed he had been hesitant to reveal the information in case it might compromise an investigation of certain allegations.
Now, Page appears to be addressing something from earlier in the case. On Jan. 22, he filed a Notice of Supplemental Authorities with new materials meant to support his claims against the DNC and Perkins Coie, whom he claims defamed him with information in Christopher Steele‘s dossier that has been reported by media outlets. The dossier was part of research done for Fusion GPS, a company reportedly hired by Perkins Coie, which had been working for the DNC and Clinton campaign.
Days after this, the defendants had filed a motion against Page’s Notice of Supplemental Authorities, and now Page is responding to that—even though the whole case has already been tossed out.
This new filing, submitted on Wednesday, essentially points to the same information as his last post-dismissal filing: he received death threats from an Oklahoma phone number related to allegations made against him in the Steele dossier.
“Oklahoma was without question the focal point of the tortious story of the resultant domestic terror threats and other associated damages,” Page said in the Wednesday filing. He went on to explain, “Defendants’ false allegations that the Plaintiff was ‘fucking in cahoots with fucking Rosneft… take you out in the street and beat the fucking piss out of you with baseball bats’ (Id.) demonstrates an unmistakable ‘causal connection between a defendant’s contacts and the suit at issue’ in Oklahoma.”
That last part is misleading at best, because the quote was originally attributed to the threat from the Oklahoma number, not the defendants in this case. The individual who made the alleged threat is not named as a defendant in this case. Judge Heaton’s decision to dismiss specifically pointed out that Page would have had to show that the defendants’ actions were “purposefully directed at the State of Oklahoma” or that their “conduct had a substantial connection with Oklahoma.”
Page relies on the actions of the person who made the threat, instead of the alleged actions of those he’s actually suing. When pressed on this, Page insisted that the DNC and Perkins Coie are still responsible for the threat.
“Similarly and as discussed in some depth throughout much of today’s filing, this and other domestic terror threats I have faced were unquestionably caused by the defamatory Dodgy Dossier by the Defendants in this case and their associates (i.e. Consultants they had hired, like Fusion GPS and Mr. Steele),” he said in an email to Law&Crime.
Judge Heaton’s order to dismiss was not based on whether or not the defendants could be held responsible, but whether his court was the appropriate forum to make that decision.
[Image via Mark Wilson/Getty Images]
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