Democrats' dirty dossier draws another law suit

Washington Times:
A third figure in the Russia probe has filed a slander lawsuit as a direct result of the infamous Democrat-financed dossier that helped prompt the FBI to investigate purported collusion between the Trump presidential campaign and Moscow.

Carter Page, a former low-level Trump volunteer acting as his own attorney, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Manhattan against Yahoo News and HuffPost (formerly The Huffington Post) through owner Oath Inc.

Mr. Page, an energy investor who does business in Russia and lived in Moscow for a time, charges that the two news outlets libeled him by repeating dossier accusations that he met two Kremlin figures in July 2016 and tried to negotiate an end to U.S. sanctions.

The false charges, he says, brought him “irreparable damage” and subjected him to voicemail death threats. He seeks $75,000 in damages.

Previously, a Russian tech entrepreneur and Russian bank owners filed defamation lawsuits against news outlets that posted the dossier.

Since the day the now-discredited dossier was posted online by BuzzFeed in January, Mr. Page has steadfastly maintained that he never held such a meeting and provided his denial to FBI agents. He repeats the denial in his legal filing, which provides a voluminous chronology of how the dossier made an obscure New York investor a vehicle for liberal rage against President Trump.

Glenn R. Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal reporter turned liberal opposition researcher, circulated the dossier during the campaign to a number of news sites. Financed by a Hillary Clinton backer, the document was produced in sequential memos by former British spy Christopher Steele, who relied principally on paid Kremlin sources.

By September last year, the first significant dossier-based article appeared in Yahoo News by Michael Isikoff, who has produced a number of Washington scoops over several decades. The story told of Mr. Carter’s supposed illicit meetings in Moscow, where he had traveled that summer to give a public speech to a university.

Yahoo News did not quote the dossier as its source, but instead cited intelligence sources. The actual source was the Democratic-paid Mr. Steele, who briefed a number a liberal media sites at the behest of Mr. Simpson and his Fusion GPS intelligence firm.

The Yahoo story set off a firestorm. HuffPost published follow-up articles. The Clinton campaign issued press releases on how Mr. Carter was part of Trump-Russia collusion. The Clinton camp attacked Mr. Carter on TV and radio.
...
Discovery in these cases may reveal who actually provided the dirty dossier to the media and what these media figures did to verify its contents.  One of the problems for the media, in this case, is Carter was not considered a public figure which means they may not be able to claim the NY Times v. Sullivan defense of a mistake.  Since it appears clear the purpose of teh dossier was to get these stories out in order to effect the Trump campaign, it is somewhat surprising that the authors of it were not included in teh suit as well as the publications.

It is not clear from the story whether the claimants in these cases will also seek punitive damages.

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