WASHINGTON — Outgoing California Congressman Devin Nunes can’t sue Twitter over mean social media posts, but he hasn’t stopped trying to bring two of his anonymous hecklers into court.
Nunes, R-Tulare, is still attempting to sue the writers behind anonymous Twitter accounts that badger him under the fictional personas of a cow and his mother.
It does not look like he will let up on this lawsuit or other ones he has filed against media companies and critics as he starts his new gig as the chief executive officer of former President Donald Trump’s social media venture. His attorney has filed new briefs in the cases since Nunes announced his retirement.
The anonymously written Twitter accounts known as “Devin Nunes’ cow” and “Devin Nunes’ Alt-Mom” were among his first targets when the congressman launched a barrage of lawsuits in 2019 against media companies and people that he alleged skewed news and conspired against conservatives like him.
Two and a half years after declaring his legal challenge on the so-called Twitter cow, @DevinCow, and mom, @NunesAlt, Nunes has not been able to serve them with a legal complaint. His lawyer told the court that they do not know who they are.
Even though they have not been served like other people Nunes has sued, the people behind those accounts continue to rack up legal fees as they seek to protect themselves from a costly lawsuit. They regularly ask for donations to help them with those charges.
The lawsuit against the Twitter users technically can continue indefinitely because laws in Virginia, where the suit was filed, effectively allow the case to remain dormant until Nunes serves the defendants or the defendants appear and move to dismiss the case. Nunes has asked for hundreds of millions of dollars from various defendants, including the Twitter writers.
“Unfortunately, the experience of being sued by Devin Nunes for $400 million has offered me no insight into what goes on in his mind,” Republican political consultant Liz Mair, who Nunes also sued in the case with @DevinCow and @NunesAlt, told The Fresno Bee. “I’m sure it would be a fascinating place to visit for a day, but not having done so, I lack even a single solitary clue as to why he would sue a fake barnyard animal that only exists on the internet.”
Nunes’ next steps include lawsuits
Nunes has filed 10 lawsuits against media companies and others he characterizes as adversaries since 2019.
In some ways, the lawsuits foreshadowed his next career change. He is resigning from the United States House of Representatives at the beginning of 2022 to lead Trump’s platform, which aims to counter the social media companies — including Twitter — that exiled the former president.
Several Republicans, including Nunes, jumped from Twitter to conservative social media platforms like Parler and GETTR since 2020.
In an announcement telling constituents of his career journey, cutting his term in Congress short by a year, Nunes said, “I was presented with a new opportunity to fight for the most important issues I believe in.”
Nunes contested coverage of his career change in at least one lawsuit.
Three days after the congressman announced his retirement, Nunes’ lawyer filed a supplemental complaint against The Washington Post in a lawsuit over a story that referenced a March 2017 trip he made to the White House grounds to obtain information about the FBI’s monitoring of Trump’s 2016 campaign advisers.
The new filing cites a story The Post published the day after Nunes announced his resignation that referred to that 2017 visit as a “midnight run.” The filing says the congressman has contested that characterization of the trip throughout litigation, and that “republication of these false statements by WaPo is evidence of WaPo’s reckless disregard.”
That trip sometimes is referred to as Nunes’ “midnight run” because of early press reports suggesting it occurred at night and Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff’s characterization of the White House visit as a “dead of night excursion.”
Nunes has told author Lee Smith that the visit actually took place in daylight, and that he went to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House and “I got my hands on the documents I was looking for and the next morning briefed (former House) Speaker (Paul) Ryan on it.”
This is the second lawsuit Nunes filed against The Post; the other was dismissed this year.
Nunes has lawsuits open against CNN, NBCUniversal, the owner of Esquire magazine, a former constituent and Mair in litigation that’s separate from the case involving the anonymous Twitter accounts.
Nunes’ Twitter setbacks
Nunes lost his effort to make Twitter pay in the ongoing lawsuit against @DevinCow and @NunesAlt when a judge last year dismissed the social media company from the case. The judge, Judge John Marshall, cited a federal law that states social media companies are not liable for what their users post.
Marshall dismissed Mair from the lawsuit this summer, writing that Nunes failed to substantiate his allegations against her.
It has rejected requests to identify them from Nunes and from the Trump administration.
The U.S. Justice Department under Trump issued a grand-jury subpoena to Twitter in November 2020 for “all customer or subscriber account information” for the Twitter mom. The Justice Department also sought a gag order blocking Twitter from telling the account owner about about the subpoena.
When Twitter’s attorneys moved to quash the subpoena, they wrote that the company was concerned the government was aiding Nunes’ legal efforts to attack and unmask his online critics.
“Given Congressman Nunes’s numerous attempts to unmask his anonymous critics on Twitter—described in detail herein—Twitter is concerned that this Subpoena is but another mechanism to attack its users’ First Amendment rights,” Twitter’s attorney’s wrote.
The Justice Department then dropped the subpoena, according to documents released in March.
A journalist sued the Justice Department to determine whether government officials attempted to use FBI resources to identify the Twitter cow after the intelligence agency declined to release information in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. The suit is ongoing.
“Democracy only works when the awesome power of the federal law enforcement apparatus can only be brought to bear on people who are suspected of federal crimes, and every deviation from that practice erodes the civil liberties of every American just a little bit more,” Kel McClanahan, the attorney for the reporter, told The Bee in an email. “If a senior member of Congress attempts to weaponize this capacity against his critics, that should be a problem for everyone, and transparency is vital to ensuring that such abuses of authority do not occur behind closed doors.”
The lawsuit has led to public run-ins for the congressman, including an incident on an airplane in which a director at a Democratic advocacy group approached him, asked if he had “sued any more cows lately” and mooed. Nunes did not respond to the provocation, video of the event shows. The director blogged about the experience.
Nunes cited the incident in another lawsuit he filed against Twitter along with a former constituent, Ben Paul Meredith. Nunes in the case claims that Meredith started a harassment campaign against him online. The congressman dropped the social media giant from the suit, which is ongoing in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California.
The writer behind @NunesAlt did not respond to a request for comment. Neither a spokesperson for Nunes nor his lawyer responded to a request for comment. The writer behind @DevinCow declined to comment on the case. Meredith’s attorney also declined to comment.
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