Devin Nunes Is a Lawsuit-Filing Machine
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.