Devin Nunes sues MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow — his 10th lawsuit since 2019
Rep. Devin Nunes filed a lawsuit this week alleging that MSNBC host Rachel Maddow defamed him in a March episode that tied him to a Russian intelligence operative.
The lawsuit, which was filed against NBCUniversal, the parent company of MSNBC, is the 10th from Nunes since 2019 alleging that critics and news media organizations conspired to harm his reputation.
The new lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas, cites comments Maddow made in a March 18 episode of “The Rachel Maddow Show” about a package he received from a Ukrainian lawmaker who was sanctioned by the United States for attempting to influence the 2020 presidential election.
The Treasury Department, in a statement about those sanctions on Sept. 10, 2020, described the lawmaker, Andriy Derkach, as “an active Russian agent.”
“Congressman Nunes has refused to answer questions about what he received from Andriy Derkach,” the lawsuit quotes Maddow as saying in the March episode. “He has refused to show the contents of the package to other members of the intelligence community. He has refused to hand it over to the FBI which is what you should do if you get something from somebody who is sanctioned by the U.S. as a Russian agent.”
Nunes’ complaint claims that MSNBC failed to ask him for comment when the network knew from published reports that Nunes, R-Tulare, had given the package to the FBI.
It continues that Nunes, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, did not accept the package from or have any unexplained interactions with Derkach and that Nunes did not refuse to share that package with other members of the House Intelligence Committee or the FBI.
A lawyer for Nunes wrote in the suit that the day he received the package, Nunes 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 Maddow suggested Nunes was obstructing justice and performing an act of treason as well as breaching the House’s code of conduct and violating “protocols concerning the handling of information that comes to the House Intelligence Committee from foreign sources such as Derkach.”
Nunes and his lawyers wrote that the network harbors “institutional hostility, hatred, extreme bias, spite and ill-will” for him and that Maddow’s criticisms were rooted in his skepticism over whether Trump colluded with Russia to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
MSNBC declined to comment in an email from a spokesperson sent to McClatchy on Wednesday. A spokesperson for Nunes did not respond to a request for comment; neither did his lawyer.
Nunes began suing media organizations in 2019, when he charged that they conspired to harm his 2018 re-election campaign.
Judges have dismissed his lawsuits against Twitter, Hearst Magazines, CNN, The Washington Post and the investigative research firm that produced the so-called Steele Dossier of unproven intelligence tips related to former President Donald Trump. A second lawsuit against The Washington Post is active in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
He also sued McClatchy, the parent company of The Fresno Bee over a 2018 news story. The lawsuit ended during the company’s bankruptcy last year.
This story was originally published August 4, 2021 at 5:00 PM with the headline "Devin Nunes sues MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow — his 10th lawsuit since 2019."
