Rep. Devin Nunes has reportedly filed a $150 million lawsuit against McClatchy over this 2018 article in the Fresno Bee titled, “A yacht, cocaine, prostitutes: Winery partly owned by Nunes sued after fundraiser event”:
Nunes files $150M lawsuit against McClatchy, alleging conspiracy to derail Clinton, Russia probes https://t.co/LLHuaM5v26
— Mollie (@MZHemingway) April 9, 2019
From Fox News:
House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes filed a $150 million lawsuit in Virginia state court against The McClatchy Company and others on Monday, alleging that one of the news agency’s reporters conspired with a political operative to derail Nunes’ oversight work into the Hillary Clinton campaign and Russian election interference.
The filing, obtained by Fox News, came a day after Nunes, R-Calif., revealed he would send eight criminal referrals to the Justice Department this week concerning purported surveillance abuses by federal authorities during the Russia probe, false statements to Congress and other matters.
And here’s the write-up from the Sacramento Bee:
But the lawsuit targets one particular story in The Fresno Bee that ran during his re-election effort last year and reported on a 2016 lawsuit against a winery whose investors include Nunes.
The story by reporter Mackenzie Mays detailed claims in the lawsuit about an event that took place aboard a yacht where winery employee Alene Anase alleged she saw guests on the charity cruise using what appeared to be cocaine “and ‘drawing straws’ for which sex worker to hire.”
That suit was later settled for an undisclosed amount, but Nunes contends the headlines about the suit and its dissemination via Twitter and the internet “was part of a scheme to defame Nunes.”
Nunes never requested a correction to the story. Much of Nunes’ 43-page lawsuit focuses on Twitter, the number of Twitter followers The Bee and Mays have and the fact that the “Yacht/Cocaine/Prostitutes article was republished online and retweeted and posted on the Internet hundreds of thousands of times.”
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Mackenzie Mays, the reporter who wrote the Fresno Bee article, tweeted this photo last night referencing the Holocaust, because why not play the Nazi card Day 1?
— Mackenzie Mays (@MackenzieMays) April 9, 2019
McClatchy is standing by Mays and the story:
Nunes suit is without merit. We @mcclatchy stand behind the reporting of the @FresnoBee: https://t.co/sFpN4fj4lM pic.twitter.com/yX4O1K9cIi
— lauren gustus (@laurengustus) April 9, 2019
Rep. Nunes is also suing Liz Mair, it appears:
Rep. Nunes is suing Liz Mair a second time . . . but for the same thing he sued her last month—tweeting a Fresno Bee story (linked below) entitled: "A yacht, cocaine, prostitutes: Winery partly owned by Nunes sued after fundraiser event." https://t.co/QDp4gBq568
— Friendly Gabriel Malor (@gabrielmalor) April 9, 2019
We’re not lawyers and have no idea what will happen with this lawsuit, but we do know a fair bit about Twitter and it certainly looks like Nunes’ lawyer, Steven Biss, may need a little help on that front.
In the document linked to by Fox News, Biss writes that Mays intentionally bolded the words “woman,” “Devin” and “cocaine” when she tweeted out a link to her story:
Except, Twitter doesn’t let you put certain words in bold. But if you were to do a Twitter search of Tweets from @MackenzieMays for “woman Devin cocaine,” then the tweet will look like the one included in the complaint:
Matt Pearce of the LA Times tweeted, “OMG — did Nunes’ counsel do a Twitter keyword search for this reporter’s tweet and then accuse her of bolding the words on Twitter?!”:
OMG — did Nunes’ counsel do a Twitter keyword search for this reporter’s tweet and then accuse her of bolding the words on Twitter?! https://t.co/qNAJL2Hk8R pic.twitter.com/a2qq0aS3UV
— Matt Pearce ? (@mattdpearce) April 9, 2019
And from lawyer Max Kennerly: “Oh God neither Nunes nor his lawyer knows how the search function works on Twitter. “Woman,” Devin,” and “cocaine” are highlighted because those are the terms Nunes and his lawyer searched for. The original tweet of course has no such highlighting:
Oh God neither Nunes nor his lawyer knows how the search function works on Twitter. "Woman," Devin," and "cocaine" are highlighted because those are the terms Nunes and his lawyer searched for. The original tweet of course has no such highlighting: https://t.co/5isMNYxd18 pic.twitter.com/MmC3dcGWlf
— Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) April 9, 2019
Mays’ tweet, as you can see, does not emphasize any word over another:
bing bong pic.twitter.com/WMQO8yWuEF
— Matt Pearce ? (@mattdpearce) April 9, 2019
Libs are currently mocking the lawsuit with the hashtag, #YachtCocaineProstitutes:
Please DO NOT use the hashtag #YachtCocaineProstitutes in reference to @DevinNunes.
He does not like it.
Thank you. #YachtCocaineProstitutes
— andy lassner (@andylassner) April 9, 2019
As of the writing of this post, it’s now the No. 2 trending topic in the U.S.:
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