Another Devin Nunes Defamation Lawsuit Turned Into Hamburger By Virginia Supreme Court

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(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

It was another tough day in court yesterday for former congressman Devin Nunes and his razzledazzle libelslander lawyer Steven Biss as the Virginia Supreme Court tossed an appeal filed in one of his many doomed defamation lawsuits.

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In May of 2018, the Fresno Bee published a story about Alpha Omega Winery, which is (or was at the time) partly owned by Nunes, hosting a fundraiser on the company yacht which allegedly featured cocaine and underage prostitutes. Nunes sued McClatchy News Service, the paper’s parent company, as well as political strategist Liz Mair, who tweeted mean things about the former congressman and just so happened to live in Virginia, where SLAPP laws are much weaker than California, where Nunes, the Bee, and the winery are located.

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HOLY CRAP: A yacht, cocaine, prostitutes: Winery partly owned by Nunes sued after fundraiser event https://t.co/1jvtS97Ymj

— Liz Mair (@LizMair) May 23, 2018

As is typical for a Biss-Nunes venture, the complaint was heavy on histrionics, light on legally cognizable injury, alleging “a multi-front, orchestrated defamation campaign of stunning breadth and scope, one that no human being should ever have to bear and suffer in their whole life.”

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“This case involves the subversive efforts of McClatchy and its confederates to use the press as a for-pay political weapon,” it added, hinting darkly that Mair must have been paid by someone to shitpost about him.

McClatchy was dismissed after it filed for bankruptcy, and Albemarle County Circuit Court Judge Claude V. Worrell Jr. dismissed the case against Mair in September of 2021. Naturally, Nunes appealed.

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Note: This is not the case where Nunes sued Mair, a Twitter cow, and Twitter itself because they said mean words about him and the social media site allowed people to tweet that he was a “treasonous shitbag” who would probably join the Proud Boys “if it weren’t for that unfortunate ‘no masturbating’ rule.” That case also hit a dead end when the court dismissed Twitter and refused to make it unmask the two troll accounts.

As flagged by Law & Crime, the McClatchy lawsuit hit yet another dead end yesterday, when the appellate court upheld Judge Worrell’s holding.

“Upon review of the record in this case and consideration of the argument submitted in support of and in opposition to the granting of an appeal, the Court is of the opinion there is no reversible error in the judgment complained of. Accordingly, the Court refuses the petition for appeal,” wrote Clerk Muriel-Theresa Pitney, sending yet another Nunes claim permanently out to pasture.

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“This lawsuit did not succeed in silencing me, and nor should lawsuits like it be allowed to silence other Americans exercising their God-given rights to free speech especially where they do so in an effort to hold their government accountable,” Mair told the Bee.

Nunes, who dropped multiple cow pies cum defamation lawsuits that succeeded in attracting nothing but flies, used his closer-than-expected electoral margins to substantiate his claim of injury. But in any event, he didn’t even make it halfway through his last term in congress. Instead, the former dairy farmer wandered off to become the CEO of Donald Trump’s Truth social media company, which appears to be going just about as well as Nunes’s legal ventures. Maybe he can appeal that one, too.

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‘This Lawsuit Did Not Succeed in Silencing Me’: Devin Nunes Just Lost Another Defamation Lawsuit, This Time in Case Against Republican Strategist [Law & Crime]
Judges dismiss Devin Nunes’ defamation lawsuits against Republican strategist [Sacramento Bee]

Liz Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.

Topics

Courts, Devin Nunes, liz dye