Trump Advisor’s Lawsuit Dismissed Despite FBI Wiretap Warrant Errors

   A federal judge in Washington, D.C., this month dismissed a lawsuit filed by Trump administration advisor Carter Page after he was investigated by the FBI for alleged illegal ties to the Russian government.

   The investigation included tapping his phone, which a later inspector general’s report concluded was done without proper legal authorization.

   “I’ve been the victim of one of the most horrendous civil rights violations in recent U.S. election history,” Page told CNN during an April 2017 televised interview. 

   He claimed $75 million in damages against the Justice Department and FBI for violations of his Fourth Amendment rights to privacy.

   The surveillance "violated federal statutes enacted to prevent unlawful spying on United States persons, as well as the Constitution," Page’s lawsuit said.

   District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich agreed in her 54-page ruling that Page raised “troubling” questions about how the FBI handled the investigation but they did not rise to the constitutional violation Page claimed.

   The FBI began investigating Page shortly after he gave a speech critical of U.S. policy toward Russia in July 2016 at a university in Moscow.

   Before he became a foreign policy advisor to Donald Trump, Page was a petroleum industry consultant. His work included contracts with Russian government-controlled oil and gas company Gazprom.

   FBI agents sought a warrant to wiretap Page before a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court. The special federal court is authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to oversee requests for surveillance warrants against foreign spies.

   The FBI agents said they were concerned Page cooperated with Russian intelligence services that were trying to influence the 2016 presidential election in favor of Donald Trump.

   Page was one of several Trump associates the FBI investigated during Operation Crossfire Hurricane, which was the code name for a nearly year-long investigation into numerous links between Russian officials and the Trump presidential campaign.

   The Justice Department inspector general’s report said the FBI’s procedure for getting a wiretap warrant on Page was riddled with errors and sloppy work.

   It included drawing evidence from a discredited dossier written by a retired British spy. There also were omissions of fact and false statements, the inspector general reported.

   Two of the four FISA warrants the FBI obtained were declared invalid by a different federal court in 2019.

   Regardless of the mistakes, Friederich said Page failed to prove the damages he claimed.

   One reason the lawsuit failed was because Page sued the wrong people, the judge said. The named defendants helped draft court filings for the surveillance warrant but did not participate in investigating Page.

   “To the extent these allegations are true, there is little question that many individual defendants, as well as the agency as a whole, engaged in wrongdoing,” Friedrich wrote. “Even so, Page has brought no actionable claim against any individual defendant or against the United States.”

   Friedrich issued her ruling on the same day President Joe Biden denounced Trump and his supporters during a prime time television presentation. He said they were trying to “promote authoritarian leaders...”

   For more information, contact The Legal Forum (www.legal-forum.net) at email: tramstack@gmail.com or phone: 202-479-7240.

D.C. Attorney General Appeals

Dismissal of Amazon Lawsuit

   The District of Columbia’s attorney general is appealing dismissal of his antitrust lawsuit against Amazon.com.

  Attorney General Karl Racine accuses the e-commerce giant of forcing restrictive contracts onto its vendors to help keep prices that consumers and sellers pay artificially high.

   “We’re filing an appeal in our antitrust lawsuit against Amazon because consumers deserve a fair online marketplace that promotes competition, innovation, & choice -- not one that’s rigged to line a single company’s pockets,” Racine tweeted after filing his notice of appeal with the D.C. Court of Appeals late last month.

   D.C. Superior Court Judge Hiram Puig-Lugo said when he dismissed the lawsuit in March that Racine failed to provide evidence that Amazon’s business practices were anticompetitive.

   Racine says Amazon uses a clause in contracts with third-party sellers that prevents them from selling their products in other markets at lower prices.

   The clauses are often called most favored nation agreements. The lawsuit says the clauses inhibit online sales competition.

   Another part of the complaint said Amazon forced companies supplying it with goods for resale to guarantee Amazon certain minimum profits on its sales or to make up the difference. The result was that suppliers needed to keep prices higher when they sold their products on other internet marketplaces, the lawsuit says.

   When Puig-Lugo dismissed the lawsuit five months ago, he said the attorney general failed to show Amazon was using market dominance in a way that prevented competitors – such as Costco, Target and Walmart – from matching Amazon’s prices.

   Racine is the only attorney general to have sued Amazon under antitrust law. Private antitrust lawsuits have been filed against the company but so far they have failed.

   Amazon remains under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission.

   The lower court case is District of Columbia v. Amazon.com Inc., case number 2021 CA 001775 B, in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia.

   For more information, contact The Legal Forum (www.legal-forum.net) at email: tramstack@gmail.com or phone: 202-479-7240.

Supreme Court Told to Avoid

Territorial Citizenship Case

   The Biden administration is telling the U.S. Supreme Court to let Congress decide the citizenship of residents of U.S. territories rather than intervening with a court ruling.

   The U.S. solicitor general informed the Supreme Court of the Biden administration’s advice recently in a legal brief.

   The brief refers to the case of Fitisemanu v. U.S., which is pending before the court. It would decide the citizenship of residents of American Samoa and the other four U.S. territories.

   The Supreme Court has touched on the issue in a series of previous rulings called the Insular Cases that date back a century. Their critics say racism and imperialism influenced the decisions that denied territorial residents U.S. citizenship as a birthright.

   They can still get U.S. citizenship, but only by applying for it and meeting residency requirements.

   The solicitor general’s brief said Fitisemanu v. U.S. is a poor example to resolve any unsettled issues.

   The plaintiffs in the case are three Samoan natives now living in Utah. They claim a constitutional right to American citizenship.

   The brief said that “the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause … refers only to the ‘United States.’ It says nothing about territories or places … that are subject to the United States’ jurisdiction.”

   The Citizenship Clause says that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” 

   Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar wrote that “citizenship in the territories was not extended by operation of the Constitution because it was instead addressed by other instruments, such as specific provisions of treaties or statutes.”

   In other words, it’s not an issue for the Supreme Court.

   American Samoa is a group of islands about 2,500 miles south of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. It has a population of nearly 50,000. It became a U.S. territory in 1900.

   American Samoa governs itself under a constitution adopted in 1967. Its unique characteristics show its people seek to preserve their traditional way of life, which includes communal property ownership.

   Their constitution directs the American Samoan government to “protect persons of Samoan ancestry against alienation of their lands and the destruction of the Samoan way of life and language.”

   Prelogar argues that the plaintiffs in Fitisemanu v. U.S. do not represent the interests of most Samoans.

   For more information, contact The Legal Forum (www.legal-forum.net) at email: tramstack@gmail.com or phone: 202-479-7240.

Washington Football Team President

Testifies about Workplace Complaints

   Congress took a deposition last week from the former president of Washington, D.C.’s professional football team as lawmakers investigate what some former employees claim was a toxic work environment.

   Many of the allegations of widespread sexual harassment fell on former team president Bruce Allen, who previously denied them when questions were raised by the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

   “The Committee is continuing to investigate the decades-long workplace misconduct at the Washington Commanders and the NFL’s failure to address it,” a committee spokesperson said in a written statement before Allen's testimony. “Mr. Allen served in senior roles under team owner Dan Snyder for many years, so his testimony is important for the Committee to fully understand these serious issues and advance reforms to protect workers in the future.”

   Allen shifted the blame to team owner Daniel Snyder, who also denied wrongdoing. Snyder fired Allen in December 2019 after published reports that cheerleaders and other female staff members were subjected to sexual improprieties and lewd comments.

   As the news reports mushroomed into a backlash against the team, Snyder is accused of conducting a “shadow investigation” to dig up damaging information on his critics, including Allen. He was president of the team for 10 years.

   The shadow investigation was mentioned in a memoRep. Carolyn B. Maloney wrote in June to her fellow members of the Oversight and Reform Committee.

   “A former long-time employee described how the team’s culture ‘glorified drinking and womanizing,’ and recalled an instance when Mr. Snyder had pressured him to drink excessively. He explained that employees were afraid to speak out ‘because they had seen so many others lose their jobs,’” the memo says.

   Allen has not commented publicly on what he told the committee during his 10-hour remote deposition. It was attended by lawyers and committee staff members but no media.

   The committee also claims to have found evidence of financial misdeeds by Snyder and his top executives. The Federal Trade Commission is investigating, along with the attorneys general of the District of Columbia and Virginia.

   The Washington Commanders’ management allegedly withheld as much as $5 million in refundable deposits from season ticket holders and hid money it was supposed to share with other National Football League owners, according to the committee’s letter to the Federal Trade Commission.

   For more information, contact The Legal Forum (www.legal-forum.net) at email: tramstack@gmail.com or phone: 202-479-7240.

CVS Nurse Sues Over Her Refusal

To Dispense Contraceptives

   A former northern Virginia MinuteClinic nurse practitioner is suing CVS Health after she claims she was fired for refusing to dispense contraceptives for religious reasons.

   The lawsuit says Paige Casey avoided giving out the contraceptives for 2-½ years at an Alexandria CVS store after she asked her employer for an exemption based on her Catholic beliefs.

   The contraceptives included Plan B and Ella, commonly called morning-after pills. They can stop pregnancies if administered immediately after contraception.

   Casey’s exemption ended in August 2021 after a CVS Health policy change. The company told employees they no longer could avoid dispensing contraceptives or other birth control to authorized patients who requested them.

   When Casey continued to refuse to give out the drugs and devices, CVS Health fired her in April, prompting her to sue in Prince William County Circuit Court. She seeks $100,000 in damages and back pay.

   The lawsuit creates a legal dilemma under Virginia law. State law says employers cannot require employees who object on moral or religious grounds from participating in procedures that result in abortions.

   The Food and Drug Administration classifies Plan B and Ella as contraceptives because they stop pregnancies by preventing a fertilized egg from being implanted into the uterus, where growth of a fetus occurs. As a result, the drugs are not classified as inducing abortions.

   However, the Catholic Church teaches that life begins at conception, even before the egg reaches the uterus. Therefore any drug or intervention that prevents the pregnancy from continuing is an abortion.

   Virginia law does not mention hormonal contraceptives like Plan B and Ella.

   CVS Health officials said they plan to continue their policy of requiring employees to dispense contraceptives.

   "It is not possible ... to grant an accommodation that exempts an employee from performing the essential functions of their job," a company spokesman said in a statement. "We cannot grant exemptions from these essential MinuteClinic functions."

   Casey’s attorneys from the conservative advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom say the policy is the same as an employer firing workers for following their religious beliefs.

   For more information, contact The Legal Forum (www.legal-forum.net) at email: tramstack@gmail.com or phone: 202-479-7240.