WASHINGTON _ Twitter is demanding that Rep. Devin Nunes' lawyer pay its legal fees in a new court filing responding to one of the Republican congressman's attempts to identify anonymous people who heckle him online.
Nunes is suing Twitter in a Virginia court, but the new filing is part of a lawsuit that is not related to the California lawmaker.
Nunes' attorney, Steven S. Biss, also represents former public relations executive Trevor Fitzgibbon. Fitzgibbon is suing a former colleague who accused him of sexual assault, Jesselyn Radack.
Biss issued a subpoena against Twitter on behalf of Fitzgibbon in December, seeking the identifying information or messages of more than a dozen Twitter accounts. Among them was an anonymously written Twitter account known as Devin Nunes' Cow, which had not previously had any part in the Fitzgibbon case.
Twitter is refusing to comply with the subpoena. Twitter asked the court for a refund of its legal fees connected to the subpoena, accusing Nunes' lawyer of issuing the subpoena in "bad faith" or "for an improper purpose."
Neither Biss nor Nunes' office responded to requests seeking comment.
Nunes, R-Calif., is suing Twitter, two parody accounts known as Devin Nunes' Cow and Devin Nunes' Mom and a Republican strategist in Henrico County, Va., court. In that case, Nunes accuses Twitter of negligently allowing the other three defendants to defame him on the social media platform.
Twitter's attorneys said in their motion to quash the subpoena that when they asked Biss how the cow account was connected to the Fitzgibbon case, Biss sent two screenshots of Radack replying to tweets made by the cow account.
Those tweets by Radack included satirical images of Nunes and thanking the account for "making her laugh harder this week than all year." Neither tweet mentions Fitzgibbon.
Biss also told Twitter's attorneys he had evidence that Radack communicated with the cow account privately, but refused to share it with them, Twitter wrote in the motion.
"The screenshots purporting to show Tweets posted by @JesselynRadack that Mr. Biss has provided to Twitter's counsel only show that @JesselynRadack, like hundreds of thousands of other Twitter users, found some of @DevinCow's commentary about Congressman Nunes to be entertaining," the attorneys wrote.
Twitter accused Biss of improperly trying to obtain the identifying information in this case because he had failed so far in Nunes' case against the parody accounts.
"Since the outset of that case, Mr. Biss has fought repeatedly _ and unsuccessfully _ to unmask the identity of the person(s) speaking anonymously through the @DevinCow account," Twitter's attorneys wrote. "And now, Mr. Biss is trying to use a federal court subpoena to effectively short circuit the Virginia state court's ability to properly address and resolve those still-ongoing discovery disputes in the context of the Nunes case."
Nunes filed six lawsuits in 2019 alleging political operatives, journalists, parody accounts and others had defamed him online. He has also alleged multiple conspiracies against him. Five of those lawsuits are still active, and Biss represents him in each one.
