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.
File-This Oct. 24, 2017, file photo shows House Intelligence
Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., speaking on Capitol Hill
in Washington. Twitter accounts linked to Russian influence operations
are pushing a conservative meme related to the investigation of Russian
election interference, researchers say. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
(AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
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."
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 accused Mays of "chos[ing] to emphasize the words 'woman,'
'Devin' and 'cocaine'" in her tweet. But, as Los Angeles Times national
correspondent Matt Pearce noted on Twitter shortly after this article was published,
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.
Nunes
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.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif.,
being questioned by reporters on Capitol Hill in February 2017.
(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
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."
Eventually
the sentence was changed to make it clear that the wine sales to
Russians came years before the Russia probe began: "Nunes' ties to [the
winery] made national headlines last year because it was discovered the
winery sold wine to Russian clients in 2013. The discovery came amid
Nunes' ongoing involvement in a federal investigation of Russian
meddling into the presidential election."
In
other articles, McClatchy also referenced Mair, the political operative
whose LinkedIn profile included the boast that she "anonymously smears"
targets on the Internet. Mair also has said Nunes had "issues" and she
was "going after him."
"The fact is, the [Federal Election
Commission] is not going to look favorably on a dude who uses his
tax-exempt political entity like a personal slush fund, flying himself
to Boston to watch them while apparently engaging in no activity
relevant to the purpose of the political organization,’ said Liz Mair," read one article published by McClatchy DC Bureau on
July 19, 2018. "McClatchy failed to inform readers of Mair’s employment
with Mair Strategies, an opposition research company that, in Mair’s
own words, 'smears' targets for paying clients," the complaint stated.
Protesters held signs as Rep. Devin Nunes visited Fresno, Calif., in March 2017.
(AP Photo/Scott Smith, File)
On July 11, 2018, Mays authored an article that
referred to an "ethics complaint" filed against Nunes by the Swamp
Accountability Project. That group is run by Mair, whom the article
identified only as "a political commentator who formerly worked for the
Republican National Committee."
"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 said.
"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."
Even as the editorial board of the Fresno Bee doubled down on the reporting,
Nunes said, other outlets refused to publish similar stories -- in
contrast to McClatchy's willful abandonment of journalistic standards,
the complaint alleged.
One newspaper, the Visalia Times-Delta,
wrote that it "did not pursue the story because editors decided the
lawsuit’s ties to Nunes were tenuous. There were no allegations that
Nunes was involved in any way with the charity event, aside from being
an investor in the winery."
The
complaint also read: "The purpose of the concerted defamation campaign
was to cause immense pain, intimidate, interfere with and divert Nunes’
attention from his investigation of corruption and alleged Russian
involvement in the 2016 Presidential Election. The substance and timing
of the publication of McClatchy’s online articles and the tweets,
retweets, replies and likes by Mair and McClatchy reporters demonstrates
that McClatchy and Mair were engaged in a joint effort, together and
with others, to defame Nunes and interfere with his duties, employment
and investigations of corruption as a United States Congressman."
It
continued: "The attacks on Nunes were pre-planned, calculated,
orchestrated and undertaken by multiple individuals acting in concert,
over a continuous period of time throughout 2018. The full scope of the
conspiracy, including the names of all participants and the level of
involvement of any agents or instrumentalities of foreign governments,
is unknown at this time and will be the subject of discovery in this
action."
Fox News' Catherine Herridge contributed to this report.
