House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes filed a $150 million lawsuit in Virginia state court against The McClatchy Company and others on Monday, alleging that one of the news agency's reporters conspired with a political operative to derail Nunes' oversight work into the Hillary Clinton campaign and Russian election interference. The filing, obtained by Fox News, came a day after Nunes, R-Calif., revealed he would send eight criminal referrals to the Justice Department this week concerning purported surveillance abuses by federal authorities during the Russia probe, false statements to Congress and other matters. In March, Nunes filed a similar $250 million lawsuit alleging defamation against Twitter and one of its users, Republican consultant Liz Mair. In Monday's complaint, Nunes again named Mair as a co-defendant, charging this time that she conspired with McClatchy reporter MacKenzie Mays to spread a variety of untruthful and misleading smears -- including that Nunes "was involved with cocaine and underage prostitutes" -- online and in print. Reached for comment late Monday, Mair directed Fox News to a USA Today op-ed she penned earlier this week concerning Nunes' previous lawsuit entitled, "Free speech means I don't have to be nice to Devin Nunes on Twitter. So why's he suing me?" A spokesperson for McClatchy told Fox News late Monday: "We have no comment and stand behind the strong reporting of The Fresno Bee," the McClatchy-owned publication cited throughout Nunes' lawsuit. In a March story, the McClatchy DC Bureau reported that Nunes' previous lawsuit against Twitter and some of its users had only "amplified" the visibility of his critics and the Internet trolls -- including one named "Devin Nunes' Cow." Fox News is told Mair has not yet received service of process, including an official copy of Nunes' complaint, in either litigation. Nunes' new complaint acknowledged the sensitivity of filing a defamation and conspiracy lawsuit against journalists but went on to allege that the defendants had "abandoned the role of journalist, and chose to leverage their considerable power to spread falsehoods and to defame" Nunes for "political and financial gain." "I'm coming to clean up the mess." — California GOP Rep. Devin Nunes "They need to retract everything they did against me, but they also need to come clean with the American people," Nunes told Fox News' "Hannity" Monday night. "Retract all of their fake news stories. This is part of the broader clean-up. Remember, a few weeks ago, I filed against Twitter -- they're censoring conservatives. McClatchy is one of the worst offenders of this. But we're coming after the rest of them. I think people are beginning to wake up now, I'm serious -- I'm coming to clean up the mess." FOX NEWS EXCLUSIVE: NUNES ANNOUNCES EIGHT CRIMINAL REFERRALS FOR FISA ABUSE, LYING TO CONGRESS The complaint filed on Monday specifically cited a May 23, 2018 article published by the Fresno Bee and written by Mays, entitled, "A yacht, cocaine, prostitutes: Winery partly owned by Nunes sued after fundraiser event." The article described a lawsuit's allegations of a 2015 party aboard the yacht involving "25 of the Napa Valley-based [Alpha Omega Winery]'s top investors, all men — [who] were openly using what appeared to be cocaine and 'drawing straws' for which sex worker to hire." That same day, Mays tweeted the article, mentioning Nunes in the same sentence as "cocaine and underage sex workers." Nunes' complaint, filed on Monday, accused Mays of "chos[ing] to emphasize the words 'woman,' 'Devin' and 'cocaine'" in her tweet. But those three words appear bolded only in the embedded tweet included in Nunes' complaint -- as they would if a keyword search were performed on Twitter for the words "woman," "Devin," and "cocaine." In Mays' original tweet, however, the words are not bolded or emphasized. An amended complaint filed by Nunes' team on Tuesday dropped the claim in the original complaint that Mays' tweet had emphasized those three words. Nunes substantively asserted in the complaint that the event on the yacht was not a "fundraiser" at all, but rather a cruise resulting from a charitable donation -- and one that McClatchy knew Nunes had nothing to do with. "The McClatchy headline intentionally omitted the word 'charity' and labeled the event a 'fundraiser' in a clear effort to imply it was a political fundraising event that a politician like Congressman Nunes would naturally attend," the complaint stated. Nunes said another line in the story was false: "[i]t's unclear … if he [Nunes] was … affiliated with the fundraiser." The congressman said the winery had told McClatchy explicitly that Nunes was not affiliated with the event. Nunes also countered that those aboard the yacht had no connection to the winery and were not investors. Additionally, "online versions of the story are punctuated by a prominent picture of Nunes and multiple film clips of him," creating a strong and misleading implication, repeated by Twitter users and other journalists, that Nunes was directly involved in the event on the yacht, the complaint continued. Defamation law prohibits not only provably false statements but also heavy implications of falsities that harm defendants' reputations. However, public figures like Nunes must meet a high bar to prove defamation and must demonstrate that the defendants recklessly or intentionally spread falsehoods, rather than merely negligently. Virginia, like many other states, includes robust protections for journalists and other actors accused of defamation in what is called an "anti-SLAPP statute." SLAPP stands for "Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation." In his complaint, Nunes alleged that regardless, defamation law should not shield what he called a knowing and deliberate effort to "destroy" his reputation. "Indeed, the entire purpose of every element of the Yacht/Cocaine/Prostitutes article – the headline, the photo, the film clips, and the text itself – is to link Nunes to an event that McClatchy actually knew before publication he had no involvement with," the complaint stated. A series of unmentioned "stealth edits" were made to the article post-publication. The original article stated that the winery serviced "Russian clients while the congressman was at the helm of a federal investigation of Russian meddling into the presidential election."<doc-sep>Less than a month after suing Twitter for allowing its users to insult him, Representative Devin Nunes, a Republican from California, said he was suing the McClatchy Company, a newspaper chain, over what he called “character assassination.” The defamation lawsuit seeks $150 million and the deletion of an article in The Fresno Bee, a McClatchy newspaper, about Alpha Omega Winery, a company that Mr. Nunes partly owns. The article, published last May, described a lawsuit by a server who was aboard a San Francisco Bay cruise in 2015 that was attended by some of the winery’s top investors and that she said had included drugs and prostitution. The article said it was “unclear” whether Mr. Nunes “was aware of the lawsuit or was affiliated with the fund-raiser” at which the cruise was auctioned. The lawsuit filed by Mr. Nunes, a loyal ally of President Trump and a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, says that he was not involved in the incident on the yacht and that he considers the article part of a politically motivated scheme to “destroy his reputation” and derail the committee’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.<doc-sep>Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) is suing Twitter. More specifically, Nunes is suing Twitter, a Republican strategist, and two parody Twitter accounts, one purporting to be Nunes’s mother, the other purporting to be Nunes’s cow. (The account is @Devincow). First reported by Fox News, the complaint seems to be part of a plan almost destined to backfire spectacularly in the public eye: one of the more combative and well-known figures in Congress (particularly for his defenses of President Donald Trump) deciding to sue a notoriously free-wheeling social media platform, two parody Twitter accounts, and a Republican operative who uses it frequently for $250 million over tweets like these. But Nunes said in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity that rather than being an example of excessive litigiousness, his complaint is intended to be “the first of many” such lawsuits against social media platforms. He argued that Twitter is the “main proliferator” of “slanderous” news and even added that he considered his lawsuit part of the Russia investigation. Watch the latest video at foxnews.com Nunes’s complaint might never get to the judgment phase and will most likely not result in a $250 million payout for Nunes and his actual, not-a-fake-Twitter-account mother. But that’s not the point. To the California Republican and his allies, social media platforms have been far too unfair to conservative and right-leaning users. And now, Nunes argues, it’s time to fight back — in court. The complaint, and the inevitable (hilarious) backlash A member of Congress since January 2003, Nunes is perhaps best known nationally first for his involvement in the Benghazi investigation and second for his dogged defense of Donald Trump, upon whose transition team Nunes served. It was Nunes, for example, who wrote the 2018 memo on wiretapping that many Trump supporters believed would permanently damage special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump’s 2016 campaign. (It didn’t.) So it stands to reason that Twitter users less enthralled with Trump would tweet things about Nunes that were perhaps less than cordial — like calling him a “presidential fluffer and swamp rat,” for instance. (In fact, a tweet using those very words was included in the lawsuit.) But in the 40-page complaint filed on Monday, Nunes argues that tweets like that and the two parody Twitter accounts were not merely examples of Twitter being Twitter. Rather, he argues that the social media platform served as “a portal of defamation” by permitting parody accounts of his mother and his imaginary bovine to exist on the platform. Moreover, he says that the purpose of those parody accounts was to “influence the outcome of the 2018 Congressional election and to intimidate [him] and interfere with his important investigation of corruption by the Clinton campaign and alleged Russian involvement in the 2016 Presidential Election.” In his claims against Liz Mair, the Republican strategist also targeted in the complaint, Nunes argues that Mair “harbored spite, ill-will, actual malice, and a demonstrated desire to injure Nunes’ good name and reputation” by, for example, publicly referencing a winery partly owned by Nunes that is now enmeshed in legal problems, and by referring to Nunes as “Dirty Devin” on Twitter. He also says that Mair and the two parody accounts (whose owners he also demands to know the names of in the suit) were working together to “defame” him and hinder his work as a Congress member. In the complaint, Nunes even argues that the “defamation” hindered his 2018 reelection campaign, which he won but by narrower margins than in previous years. (He does not note that his congressional seat was a top target for Democrats, which is a more likely reason for the narrow margin of victory than three Twitter accounts, one of which only had 1,700 followers at the time the complaint was filed.) Mair did not respond to a request for comment but did say in an automated email that she has not yet fully reviewed “the legal documentation in question and therefore am declining comment.” On Twitter, she said in response to the complaint that “as a libertarian Republican,” she believes in the power of the First Amendment. For those looking for comment from me on #DevinNunes lawsuit, here you go. Also, to support my legal defense and the ongoing, vital activities of the Swamp Accountability Fund, please donate here: https://t.co/zcYqrHn6OH pic.twitter.com/ogktKTIx4I — BrandValue$4B (@LizMair) March 19, 2019 The response to the complaint (and Nunes’s choice of attorney) on Twitter, the platform upon which Nunes has centered his ire, was less than complimentary, even from conservatives. Gabriel Malor, an attorney and occasional contributor to conservative publications the Federalist and the Washington Examiner, said Nunes’s complaint was “exactly what [he’d] expect a ding dong like Devin Nunes to do.” Suing Twitter and Liz Mair for $200 million is exactly what I'd expect a ding dong like Devin Nunes to do. In the lawsuit he claims that Twitter's failure to police mean memes, among other things, caused him "extreme pain and suffering." GTFOOH, ding dong. — Friendly Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) March 18, 2019 And Jim Swift, a senior editor at the Bulwark, noted that during the 115th Congress, Nunes was a sponsor on a bill meant to discourage frivolous lawsuits (named, appropriately, the Discouraging Frivolous Lawsuits Act). Clearly it didn't become law. https://t.co/siVbgKZMth — Jim Swift (@JimSwiftDC) March 19, 2019 And in yet another example of the Streisand effect, suing parody Twitter accounts tends to only make parody Twitter accounts more well known. Devin Nunes' cow @DevinCow went from 1204 followers to 27,200 in just a few hours, all because @DevinNunes is suing him. — Cheri Jacobus (@CheriJacobus) March 19, 2019 That follower number is now 94,368. This lawsuit is playing to two audiences — the courts, and the right But the question isn’t necessarily “Is Nunes’s lawsuit shambolic,” but “What does Nunes hope to achieve with his shambolic lawsuit?” So I spoke with Mark Tushnet, a First Amendment professor at Harvard Law School. After going through the complaint, Tushnet said that Nunes’s only real legal claim against Mair is for libel — a written statement that is harmful to someone else’s reputation.<doc-sep>US Representative Devin Nunes has sued Twitter and a handful of users for defamation and negligence, accusing Twitter of acting as a “vessel of opposition research” for hosting accounts that insulted Nunes. The suit is the latest of several filed against social media platforms for alleged bias against conservative politicians, none of which have made substantial progress in court. Nunes’ lawsuit mostly focuses on a cluster of Twitter accounts that Nunes claims were coordinating libelous attacks on him, primarily “Devin Nunes’ Cow”, the now-suspended “Devin Nunes’ Mom”, and the account of Republican political consultant Liz Mair. The complaint — published by Fox News this afternoon — quotes numerous tweets from those accounts, which it claims “maliciously attacked every aspect of Nunes’ character, honesty, integrity, ethics, and fitness to perform his duties as a United States Congressman.” The attacks included accusing Nunes of racism, claiming he had obstructed justice in the Congressional probe on Russian political interference, and calling him a “treasonous cowpoke.” But the suit also claims that Twitter bears legal culpability for the attacks, since it “consciously allowed the defamation of Nunes to continue” by not suspending the accounts. “Twitter did nothing to investigate or review the defamation that appeared in plain view on its platform,” it says. “As part of its agenda to squelch Nunes’ voice, cause him extreme pain and suffering, influence the 2018 Congressional election, and distract, intimidate and interfere with Nunes’ investigation into corruption and Russian involvement in the 2016 Presidential Election, Twitter did absolutely nothing.” Nunes also accused Twitter of “shadowbanning” his account, referring to an incident in which some Twitter users’ names failed to appear as auto-suggestions. Twitter has previously stated that the issue affected a wide spread of accounts, and that it arose from the design of an automated system, not an intent to demote specific accounts. (It also doesn’t fall under the traditional definition of “shadowbanning,” since the accounts were still accessible through searches and to followers.) A Twitter spokesperson declined comment on Nunes’ lawsuit. According to Nunes, Twitter’s importance gives it “a duty to exercise ordinary and reasonable care” in policing defamation. “Twitter’s use of its platform as a portal for defamation by political operatives and their clients runs contrary to every tenet of American democracy,” the suit says. “A candidate without Twitter is a losing candidate. The ability to use Twitter is a vital part of modern citizenship,” because “Twitter is not merely a website: it is the modern town square.” He’s requesting $250 million in damages for Twitter’s alleged negligence. Courts have generally let platforms make their own moderation calls Some courts have held that Twitter is a kind of public square — but in the context of public officials engaging with users, not Twitter allowing people onto the platform. So far, judges have supported web platforms’ right to ban or demote users as they wish, and they’ve avoided holding them responsible for user posts. An appeals court threw out a lawsuit from white nationalist Jared Taylor over a Twitter ban, and an expansive case against Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Apple just suffered a defeat in court. And the California Supreme Court ruled that Yelp couldn’t be required to take down a defamatory user post, a decision that the US Supreme Court left standing in January. If these tweets are legally defamatory, Nunes’ accusations against Twitter might be stymied by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which holds that web platforms aren’t liable for content that’s posted by users. (We also don’t know if a court would find them defamatory — simply calling someone a racist, for instance, is generally a defensible statement of opinion.) This complaint doesn’t appear to accuse Twitter itself of defamation, but it’s not clear that Nunes’ negligence argument is much stronger, nor that a court is likely to grant his request to make Twitter suspend all the accounts in question. Regardless of how far this lawsuit progresses, Twitter and other platforms are under fire in Congress, where CEO Jack Dorsey appeared for two hearings last year. Tech companies have every incentive to avoid making legislators angry — even if the courts have been fairly sympathetic.<doc-sep>
This image was removed due to legal reasons. Rep. Devin Nunes, one of the biggest Trump stans in Congress, has filed another lawsuit against his haters. This time, the target is the media organization The McClatchy Company and Republican consultant Liz Mair, who, Nunes alleges in the $150 million suit, conspired to undermine his oversight work on the Hillary Clinton campaign and Russian election interference, according to Fox News. Wild! Nunes is the Congressman who has led the charge on allegations that the FBI and the Department of Justice conducted a biased investigation into Donald Trump’s campaign and abused the FISA court. Just yesterday, Nunes announced that he is sending eight criminal referrals to Attorney General William Barr regarding these allegations. This is the second major lawsuit Nunes has filed in a month that names Mair as a defendant. The other one is directed at Twitter, and specific Twitter users including Mair, alleging that the platform tried to silence him and allowed harassment against him by parody accounts including “Devin Nunes’ Mom” and “Devin Nunes’ Cow.” In his newest suit, which alleges defamation and conspiracy, Nunes says that a McClatchy journalist “abandoned the role of journalist, and chose to leverage their considerable power to spread falsehoods and to defame.” The journalist in question is MacKenzie Mays, who Nunes says conspired with Mair to spread falsehoods about Nunes, including that he “was involved with cocaine and underage prostitutes,” in order to undermine his investigations. From Fox News: Nunes’ new complaint specifically cited a May 23, 2018 article published by the McClatchy-owned Fresno Bee and written by Mays, entitled, “A yacht, cocaine, prostitutes: Winery partly owned by Nunes sued after fundraiser event.” The article described a lawsuit’s allegations of a 2015 party aboard the yacht involving “25 of the Napa Valley-based [Alpha Omega Winery]’s top investors, all men — [who] were openly using what appeared to be cocaine and ‘drawing straws’ for which sex worker to hire.” That same day, Mays tweeted the article, mentioning Nunes in the same sentence as “cocaine and underage sex workers.” But, Nunes asserted in the complaint Monday, the event on the yacht was not a “fundraiser” at all, but rather a cruise resulting from a charitable donation — and one that McClatchy knew Nunes had nothing to do with. The complaint goes on to allege that because the story contained photos and a video clip of Nunes, it created the impression that he was directly involved with the event. The lawsuit also mentions other articles, published by McClatchy, at least one written by Mays, that quotes Mair without originally disclosing that she runs an opposition research firm that Mair says on LinkedIn is paid to “smear” targets online. “Mays concealed the fact that Mair is an opposition research operative who admittedly smears targets, such as Nunes, for pay from as-yet anonymous clients,” the complaint reads. “This was a crucial omission, since it would have revealed Mair’s motives and cast grave doubt on her credibility and veracity and on the credibility and veracity of her handlers.” McClatchy didn’t respond to Fox News’ request for comment.