The case that exposed one of the most egregious abuses of government surveillance power in modern American history has reached the highest court in the land.

Carter Page's lawsuit against former FBI Director James Comey, former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is now before the Supreme Court, which is considering whether to hear Carter Page v. James B. Comey in its 2025–2026 term.

The petition was filed on December 11, 2025, after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed the dismissal of Page's lawsuit. The government has already secured a delay, pushing its response deadline to mid-March. The nation's nine justices have not yet made a final decision on whether to take the case.

If they do, it could finally answer a question that has haunted the Russiagate saga from the beginning: Can federal officials who weaponize the surveillance state against an American citizen be held accountable in court?

What the FBI did to Carter Page

Carter Page, an energy consultant who briefly served as a foreign policy adviser to President Donald Trump's 2016 campaign, became the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation known as Crossfire Hurricane, Just The News reported. The FBI obtained four warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to surveil him. According to Page's lawyers:

"The Federal Bureau of Investigation obtained four warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to surveil Petitioner Dr. Carter Page. But its applications contained multiple errors, omissions, and misstatements that the FBI later concluded vitiated its showing of probable cause."

Read that again. The FBI itself later concluded that its own applications lacked probable cause. These weren't minor paperwork errors. They were the foundation upon which the entire surveillance apparatus was aimed at an American citizen, and that foundation was rotten.

It got worse. Page's lawyers allege that two agents leaked information about the FBI's surveillance to the press, resulting in an April 2017 article in The Washington Post. The surveillance wasn't just unjustified. It was broadcast.

A lawsuit the courts didn't want to hear

In 2020, Page filed a federal lawsuit seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages from Comey, McCabe, Rosenstein, and others. The suit alleged these officials violated his constitutional rights by submitting false or misleading information to secure the FISA warrant.

Federal courts dismissed the case. The D.C. Circuit affirmed that dismissal. And so Carter Page, a man whose government surveilled him based on applications the FBI itself admitted were deficient, was told he had no legal remedy.

Think about what that means as a matter of principle. The Justice Department acknowledged serious mistakes in the FISA process related to Page. No one disputes that the warrants were built on flawed applications. And yet the legal system's answer, so far, has been: too bad.

Why this matters beyond one man's case

The question before the Supreme Court isn't merely whether Carter Page deserves compensation, though a strong case exists that he does. The deeper question is whether FISA, a law enacted in 1978, operates as an accountability-free zone where federal officials can:

• Submit misleading information to a secret court
• Obtain warrants to surveil American citizens
• Leak classified details of that surveillance to the press
• Face no personal legal consequences when the whole thing collapses

If the answer is yes, then FISA isn't a safeguard. It's a blank check.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was designed to balance national security imperatives with constitutional protections. It operates in secret precisely because the matters before it are sensitive. That secrecy demands a higher standard of honesty from the officials who appear before it, not a lower one. When agents submit applications riddled with "errors, omissions, and misstatements," the secrecy doesn't protect national security. It protects the agents.

The government's delay tells its own story

The government successfully petitioned for extra time to respond, pushing its deadline to mid-March. This is procedurally routine but symbolically fitting. Every stage of this saga has involved the federal bureaucracy buying itself more time, more distance, more insulation from the consequences of what happened during Crossfire Hurricane.

Comey wrote a book. McCabe landed a CNN gig. Rosenstein moved on to private practice. The people who approved or facilitated the surveillance of Carter Page have suffered no meaningful professional or legal consequences. Page, meanwhile, has spent years in court trying to establish a basic principle: that the government cannot fabricate its way into your private life and walk away clean.

What the Court is really being asked

At its core, this petition asks the Supreme Court to decide whether the existing legal framework provides any meaningful check on FISA abuse. Lower courts have effectively ruled that qualified immunity and the nature of FISA proceedings shield officials from civil liability, even when the government itself admits the applications were defective.

Conservatives have warned for years that the surveillance state, left unchecked, would eventually be turned inward. That it would target not foreign adversaries but domestic political opponents. Carter Page's case isn't a hypothetical. It's the proof.

The Supreme Court doesn't have to take the case. It declines most petitions. But if the justices pass on this one, they will be ratifying a system in which federal agents can mislead a secret court, destroy a citizen's reputation, and never answer for it in any courtroom, secret or otherwise.

Carter Page has been fighting this battle for nearly a decade. The question now is whether the Supreme Court believes the Constitution has something to say about it.