by Flynn Ezra Beckman
We thought we would check in on Devin Nunes and see how his nine (9!) defamation suits are going.
When last we wrote about Devin Nunes in September, he had filed numerous potential SLAPP suits around the country, and had recently had one such suit dismissed. That suit, in the Northern District of Iowa, was against journalist Ryan Lizza and Esquire magazine regarding an article they published about Nunes’ family’s dairy farm in Iowa.
Since that time, Nunes and his associates have kept up their litigious ways, but have had a hard time in court. Mere days after our last post on the subject, in early September, Nunes’ lawyer filed an expanded brief in a Virginia state court lawsuit against a political operative and the then owners of the Fresno Bee newspaper.
The next day, all but one claim of the Nunes family’s suit against Esquire magazine were dismissed by the federal court in Iowa. In that case, the Nunes family was objecting to the magazine article’s portrayal of their dairy business located in Iowa, largely duplicating Nunes’ own suit, the dismissal of which we wrote about last time.
Then in December, Nunes had another suit thrown out. This one was decided in the District of Columbia, where Nunes claimed that the Washington Post conspired with House Democrats and defamed him. His theory of harm was that the Washington Post implied that he gave incorrect information to then-President Trump.
An aide of Nunes sued CNN for defamation with help from Nunes’ lawyer, but that was also dismissed this February. As Techdirt reports, this District Court case in Maryland has resulted in some sanctions for the Nunes-associated legal team.
Nunes’ own claims against CNN were thrown out of court in February. Nunes sought $435 million from CNN for publishing an account by Lev Parnas that Nunes met with a former Ukrainian prosecutor to solicit information that would be politically harmful to Joe Biden. The judge in the Southern District of New York found that since Nunes is a California representative, the alleged harm was most substantial in California and thus California law should apply. Per California law, since Nunes did not request a retraction before suing, the case was dismissed on procedural grounds.
Then in early April it was Nunes’ lawsuit against Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson that has suffered a loss. The motion to dismiss was granted by the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. Nunes was claiming that an ethics investigation into his behavior as a Congressperson was actually a RICO conspiracy, a notion that the court rejected.
Most recently, Nunes has not given up in the dismissal of the complaint against Lizza regarding his family’s dairy farm that we originally wrote about. In mid-April, a panel of the 8th Circuit heard argument from the parties on appeal, but we do not yet know the result of that hearing.
All of these suits together add up to a pattern of litigious behavior seemingly designed to discourage critical reporting. In some of his lawsuits, Nunes seems to have chosen his venue carefully with an eye to avoiding strong state anti-SLAPP laws. In others, he alleges federal claims in federal court, like conspiracy, which are not subject to state anti-SLAPP law at all. With a federal anti-SLAPP law, plaintiffs like Nunes would have to think twice about such legal maneuvers. Across every state in America, the threat of protracted legal entanglements and costly defenses would lose much of their chilling effect on freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
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