Congressman Devin Nunes (R-CA), ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, a man who is becoming well known for taking the fight to the left-wing media, has set his sights on NBCUniversal, the parent company of MSNBC and employer of Rachel Maddow. Nunes’ attorneys have alleged that both Maddow and MSNBC “harbor an institutional hostility, hatred, extreme bias, spite and ill-will” toward the California Republican.
Dishonest Reporting From MSNBC? (Say It Isn’t So…)
More specifically, the Congressman’s legal team points to the Russia-gate conspiracy as proof positive that Maddow’s criticisms of him rise to the level of defamation.
According to The Hill,
“The congressman’s lawyers argue that Maddow’s criticisms of Nunes are based on his “emergence as the most prominent skeptic in Congress of Maddow’s marquee news narrative from 2017 to 2019: that the Trump campaign colluded with Russians to hack the 2016 presidential elections.”
The suit specifically takes issue with statements made by Maddow during her show on March 18, during which she suggested that Nunes refused to turn over a package he had reportedly received from the suspected Russian agent to the FBI.
“Congressman Nunes has refused to answer questions about what he received from Andriy Derkach. He has refused to show the contents of the package to other members of the intelligence community,” the lawsuit quotes Maddow as saying on her program. “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.”
The difficult hurdle a defamation claim has to jump is that it is dependent upon the accused having knowledge prior to publication that the offending piece that the information they are providing is false. This is precisely what Nunes’ team alleges took place with Maddow and MSNBC. Central to their claim is that it was widely publicized that the Congressman had interviewed with other journalists and attested that he had given the package from Derkach to the FBI, and they knew this. Furthermore, they deliberately did not seek Nunes or his office out for comment before publication.
This One Is Different Than The Others.
The Daily Boulder reports, that Nunes has had a few cases like this thrown out (likely by activist left-leaning judges), but this one seems to have some survivability to it. They cite a February libel suit against CNN and a 2020 defamation suit against The Washington Post, even a case against Twitter in 2019 against Twitter about a couple of trolling accounts that targeted him. But this case has some pretty compelling possibilities under the standard of ‘reasonability’. Is it “reasonable” that a national network like MSNBC and their flagship show: Rachel Maddow could possibly miss Nunes’ other interviews with prominent news sources wherein he attested handing the suspect package to the FBI? No. Is it reasonable that they wouldn’t attempt to make contact with a sitting Congressman or his staff? No. It’s not.
NBCUniversal has some good lawyers, that’s a good thing too, they’re going to need them.