Judge tosses Page defamation suit against Verizon company

DOVER, Del. (AP) — A Delaware judge has dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed by former Donald Trump campaign operative Carter Page against the media company that includes Yahoo! and AOL and that formerly owned HuffPost.

The judge ruled last week that Page had failed to demonstrate that articles written about his connection to an FBI investigation into suspected Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign were defamatory or untrue.

Page claimed that he was harmed by the publication of false and defamatory statements suggesting that he was secretly plotting with Russian leaders to sabotage the 2016 election. Page was the target of a secret surveillance campaign by the FBI as part of an investigation into Russian interference in the campaign, but he was never charged with any wrongdoing.

The lawsuit was filed in July against Oath Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Verizon Communications Inc. that is now known as Verizon Media and which includes Yahoo! and AOL. The company also owned HuffPost, formerly known as The Huffington Post, but sold it to BuzzFeed in November.

Page sought to hold Oath liable for 11 articles, particularly one written by Michael Isikoff and published by Yahoo! in September 2016.

Page took specific exception with Isikoff’s description of a dossier of information compiled during the course of the 2016 presidential campaign by Christopher Steele, a former British spy whose research into ties between Trump and Russia was financed by Democrats. The FBI used the dossier to obtain warrants to eavesdrop on Page, even though it was alerted that it might contain Russian disinformation and a key source for Steele was himself the target of an FBI investigation for possible connections to Russian intelligence.

Isikoff described the dossier as an “intelligence report,” and referred to Steele...