Texas judge moves Devin Nunes’ lawsuit vs. MSNBC to a court where he’s lost before
Former California congressman Devin Nunes has again been punted to New York to continue one of his defamation lawsuits.
Nunes, who left Congress to become the chief executive officer of former President Donald Trump’s media organization, must continue his lawsuit against the parent company of MSNBC in the Southern District of New York, a judge in Texas ruled last week.
That means Nunes’ lawyers must argue before a judge in a court that previously dismissed one of his defamation lawsuits.
Nunes, a Republican from Tulare who represented the Fresno area in Congress for 19 years, is suing the media organization over statements made by anchor Rachel Maddow in a segment of her namesake show.
Judge Amos L. Mazzant of U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas said that Nunes could not sue NBCUniversal in Texas because NBCUniversal and Maddow’s report lack sufficient ties to Texas.
“Aside from conclusory allegations, Nunes presents no evidence that the statements made in the Report or any actions by NBCU related to the Report’s publication directly targeted Texas residents. Nor can he. The Report makes no mention of this forum,” Mazzant wrote.
“Tellingly, NBCU contends that The Rachel Maddow Show, including the Report segment, was never even broadcast on its sole Texas network — a fact Nunes does not refute,” the judge added.
Nunes’ lawyers claimed that the broadcast harmed his reputation among Texas residents and that the segment was viewed widely on various media platforms.
Lawyers for NBCUniversal had asked that the Texas judge either dismiss the case or move it to a district court in California, where Nunes is from and where the media company is headquartered.
Mazzant wrote that the district court NBCUniversal requested did not capture the part of California where the company is located. As the show was filmed and produced in New York, he found that the court there was the proper venue.
Nunes is suing over comments about a Russian package
The lawsuit cites comments from a March 18, 2021, episode of “The Rachel Maddow Show” about a package Nunes received from a Ukrainian lawmaker who was sanctioned by the United States for attempting to influence the 2020 presidential election. The Treasury Department named the lawmaker, Andriy Derkach, as “an active Russian agent.”
In the episode, Maddow says that Nunes refused to answer questions about what was in the package, show its contents to other members of the intelligence community or hand it over to the FBI.
Nunes’ complaint claimed that MSNBC failed to ask him for comment when the network knew from published reports that he had given the package to the FBI. His lawyer wrote that the day he received the package, Nunes, then a member of the House Intelligence Committee, sent it unopened to the FBI and requested a meeting with then-Attorney General William Barr. The next month, the suit claims, Nunes and other House Intelligence Committee Republicans briefed the FBI on their concerns about the package.
Nunes claims that Maddow suggested that he was obstructing justice, committing an act of treason and violating the United States House of Representatives’ code of conduct.
Lawyers for NBCUniversal wrote that an attorney for Nunes sent a letter a few weeks later to the organization in which he claimed the statements were false. Representatives for the media company responded to the lawyer, Steven Biss, writing that it was unaware of any statements made from Nunes about giving the package to the FBI until this letter and requesting more information in order to update its reporting, according to the lawsuit. Biss never responded, the lawyers wrote.
Neither lawyers for Nunes nor NBCUniversal responded to a request for comment. Nunes’ team did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for NBCUniversal and MSNBC declined to comment.
New York judge previously dismissed one of Nunes’ lawsuits
Nunes had to sue CNN in the Southern District of New York over claims that the organization published a “demonstrably false hit piece” when it reported a claim that Nunes was in Vienna to meet with Ukrainian officials who were digging up political dirt on President Joe Biden. CNN reported that Nunes refused to speak with them.
When he filed suit, Nunes released photos which showed he was not in Vienna at the time CNN’s source said he was.
U.S. District Court Judge Laura Taylor Swain ruled that Nunes should have asked CNN for a retraction before suing, which he did not do, per a California law she found applied to the case. She dismissed the lawsuit last year.
Nunes has since appealed the decision. Judges have yet to decide whether to reopen the case.
He had originally filed the lawsuit against CNN in a U.S. District Court in Virginia.
Nunes’ lawsuit against NBCUniversal is the third of his that judges have moved. The same federal judge in Virginia moved a lawsuit Nunes filed against The Washington Post to the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., in 2020.
A judge dismissed the suit against The Post later that year. An appellate court rejected Nunes’ appeal to reopen the case in 2021.
Nunes continues lawsuits after leaving Congress
Nunes has filed 10 defamation lawsuits since 2019 in which he claims that media companies and critics have tried to harm his reputation. In addition to NBCUniversal, Nunes is still suing The Washington Post in a different lawsuit, Hearst, a former constituent of his and two anonymous Twitter users who parody a cow and his mother.
Judges have dismissed cases against Twitter, a Republican strategist and the makers of the so-called Steele Dossier in addition to the first lawsuit against The Post. Nunes dropped lawsuits against the parent company of The Fresno Bee and constituents of his who called him a “fake farmer.” He is appealing a second suit against the strategist, Liz Mair.
Since announcing his career move, Nunes has not relented in his legal pursuits. His lawyers have continued to file briefs.
And he mentions the lawsuits on his website as one of the ways that he has “fought back against the onslaught” of “media attacks and smear operations.”
This story was originally published February 1, 2022 at 2:50 PM with the headline "Texas judge moves Devin Nunes’ lawsuit vs. MSNBC to a court where he’s lost before."
