WASHINGTON — The Virginia Supreme Court denied Devin Nunes’ appeal to continue suing a Republican strategist whom the former California congressman claimed had conspired to defame him.
“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,” the clerk, Muriel-Theresa Pitney, wrote in the decision obtained by The Fresno Bee.
Nunes, who previously represented the area surrounding Tulare for about two decades, was suing the strategist, Liz Mair, alongside McClatchy, the parent company of The Bee, over a news story published in 2018. He sought $150 million from Mair in the case that was filed in Virginia’s Albemarle County Circuit Court.
“I thank the Court for upholding the First Amendment and my — and all Americans’ — rights of free speech,” Mair wrote in a statement to The Bee.
The California Republican filed the suit against McClatchy and Mair over a 2018 news story that described an employee’s lawsuit against Alpha Omega Winery, a business in which Nunes holds a limited partnership. The employee in the story claimed she was asked to work at a charity event on a yacht where the guests appeared to use drugs and hire prostitutes, which made the employee uncomfortable.
Nunes claimed Mair conspired to spread defamatory information about him through the story. Judge Claude V. Worrell Jr. in Albemarle ruled that Nunes’ complaint failed to show he could prove that Mair conspired against him or defamed him, according to Worrell’s order that was obtained by The Bee.
Nunes dropped McClatchy from the suit in 2020 during the company’s bankruptcy.
This is one of two lawsuits that Nunes filed against Mair. He also sued her alongside Twitter and two anonymous Twitter accounts who parody a cow and his mother.
Judge John Marshall of Virginia’s Henrico County Circuit Court dismissed that case against Mair this summer. Marshall had already dismissed Twitter, saying that the social media company was not responsible for what its account users wrote on its platform.
Nunes is still attempting to sue the people behind the two parody accounts — “Devin Nunes’ cow,” or @DevinCow, and “Devin Nunes’ Alt-Mom,” or @NunesAlt — but his lawyer has been unable to serve them with a complaint. His lawyer previously claimed that he cannot do so because he does not know who the people behind the accounts are.
Until Nunes successfully serves the accounts or drops them from the lawsuit, he cannot appeal the decision to dismiss Mair. The former congressman sought $250 million from her in that case.
“While I admit to being less interesting than a fake, anonymous barnyard animal on Twitter, this case should nonetheless be firmly recorded in the history books as an instance of where our democratic republic safeguarded essential civil liberties and stood strong for freedom,” Mair told The Bee. “I hope that it will always do so, for the benefit of all Americans.”
Neither Nunes’ team nor his lawyer responded to a request for comment.
Nunes, who is now the chief executive officer of former President Donald Trump’s media company, has filed 10 lawsuits since 2019 against news organizations, people and entities whom he claims have defamed or conspired against him.
Many of the defendants in these suits have been dismissed or dropped. Nunes has appealed many of these decisions.
The decision to deny Nunes’ appeal in Virginia is the former congressman’s third recent legal setback. At the beginning of February, a federal judge in Iowa forced Nunes and his family to combine their cases against a magazine company and journalist over a 2018 story about their dairy.
While Nunes is considered a public figure, his family is not, their lawyers contend, which is why they had wanted separate suits. It is harder for public figures to recover damages in libel lawsuits.
Just a few days before, a judge at a U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas moved Nunes’ lawsuit against the parent company of MSNBC to a federal court in New York that had previously dismissed one of his suits. The former congressman is suing NBCUniversal over anchor Rachel Maddow’s statements in a segment of her namesake show that tied Nunes to a Russian operative’s package.
Nunes is appealing a decision by a judge in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York to dismiss his lawsuit against CNN. The former congressman sued CNN over a report that placed him in Vienna to speak with officials who were looking into political dirt on Joe Biden. Nunes procured photos when he filed suit that showed he was not in Vienna at the time CNN’s source said he was.
He also sued a farmer alongside others from his former district, the company known for compiling the so-called Steele Dossier, a former constituent of his and The Washington Post (twice). Of those, the suit against the constituent and one of the lawsuits against The Post are ongoing.
Mair said she hopes that the Virginia Supreme Court’s judgment “will dissuade other government and political figures from attempting to use litigation as a cudgel to stifle free speech.”
“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,” she said.
