Devin Nunes files yet ANOTHER lawsuit
Devin Nunes Sues Reporter, Hearst for Article About Family’s Iowa Dairy
California Representative Devin Nunes asked a federal court in Iowa Monday to award him $75 million in damages in a defamation and common law conspiracy suit against reporter Ryan Lizza and Hearst Magazines.
The House Republican and ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence claims in the suit that Lizza defamed him in a Sept. 30, 2018, article he wrote for Esquire titled “Devin Nunes’s Farm Is Hiding a Politically Explosive Secret.”
The article focuses on Lizza’s investigation into Nunes’s family’s dairy in Sibley, Iowa. In the piece, Lizza, who is now Politico’s chief Washington correspondent and an analyst for CNN, asks why the Nuneses and others would “conspire to hide the fact” that the family had sold its farm in California and moved to Iowa. The reporter also describes being followed by members of Nunes’s family and says two sources told him that the dairy – called NuStar Farms – relied partly upon undocumented labor.
Nunes, a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump, refers to the article throughout his complaint as the “Lizza Hit Piece.” The congressman claims the article was an attempt to target him ahead of the 2018 Congressional election, to retaliate against him for “exposing corruption, including the DNC/Clinton campaign’s role in funding the salacious ‘Steele dossier,’” and to “interfere with his official duties as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election.”
“The Lizza Hit Piece ascribes and imputes to Plaintiff conduct, characteristics and conditions, including dishonesty, deception, lying, conspiracy, corruption, bias, lack of integrity and ethics, that would adversely affect his fitness to be a United States Congressman and/or businessperson,” the 25-page complaint states. “The strong defamatory gist and false implication from the Lizza Hit Piece is that Plaintiff was involved in, covered-up, used his office to cover up, conspired with others to conceal, or was aware of criminal wrongdoing.”
Nunes is also suing Lizza and Hearst, which publishes Esquire, for common law conspiracy. He claims Lizza conspired with members of the media, including his girlfriend Olivia Nuzzi – who is New York Magazine’s Washington correspondent – to promote and republish the article on Twitter and elsewhere.
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