California Congressman Devin Nunes is taking another one of his detractors to court.
The litigious lawmaker has filed a defamation lawsuit against NBCUniversal, claiming MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow suggested during her top-rated show that he conspired with a Russian agent to help rig the 2016 presidential election in favor of Donald Trump.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas. It accuses Maddow and MSNBC of harboring “an institutional hostility, hatred, extreme bias, spite and ill-will” toward Nunes.
Lawyers for Nunes say the legislator’s opposition to the narrative that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the White House made him a target for Maddow and her “marquee news narrative from 2017 to 2019. “
The lawsuit specifically mentioned statements made by Maddow during her show on March 18. On that program, she suggested that Nunes refused to turn over a package he had reportedly received from the suspected Russian agent to the FBI.
From The Hill:
“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.”
Nunes and his attorneys claim that the network knew that the California lawmaker had told other reporters that he had given the package in question to the FBI and MSNBC failed to ask him for a comment.
NBCUniversal has not commented on the lawsuit.
Nunes has become almost as well known for filing lawsuits as he is for actual legislating. He has sued several media outlets and social media platforms in recent years, including the user behind a Twitter account that parodied Nunes. Three of those cases have already been tossed by judges, and have made him a popular punching bag for Twitter users.