After suing Twitter, Rep. Devin Nunes is now suing McClatchy newspapers for $150 million over a Fresno Bee article Nunes didn’t like. Sean Hannity who holds himself up as a free speech lover, didn’t just approve, he urged Nunes to sue Democrat Adam Schiff, too.
You may recall that Snowflake Nunes sued Twitter last month for $250 million partly because of insulting tweets “that no human being should ever have to bear and suffer in their whole life.”
As I wrote about that suit, it should be a joke that Nunes has such thin skin he is suing an account called Devin Nunes’ Cow because it tweeted comments such as, “Devin’s boots are full of manure. He’s udder-ly worthless and its pasture time to move him to prison.”
But what Nunes is up to is not at all funny. The legal merits of the case are “highly questionable at best,” noted The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake, but he also pointed out that the suit’s potential impact on stifling criticism and reporting on Nunes could be quite significant.
Now Nunes has followed up with a $150 million lawsuit against McClatchy, owner of The Fresno Bee, with what seems like a deliberate attempt to punish the paper for one unflattering article more than over any love for the truth. On Monday, The Bee reported that Nunes had never asked for a correction to the story which was published in May, 2018.
This morning, Fox’s own judicial analyst, Andrew Napolitano, made it pretty clear Nunes’ latest suit is meritless, too, though he did not note its perniciousness (video is below). But nobody at Fox seemed to think any skepticism was needed when Nunes announced the suit on Hannity last night. However, somebody thought it important enough to note it after the fact, when the video was posted on YouTube:
I’m old enough to remember Hannity professing to love free speech so much, he praised Islamophobic extremist Pamela Geller as a free-speech martyr after one of her inflammatory stunts resulted in violence. Hannity said admiringly, “You’re saying, ‘No, this is America and that we are not going to give in to this political correctness or this demand that we can’t draw a cartoon.’”
I’m also old enough to recall Hannity insisting he’s against all boycotts. When Stephen Colbert came under fire for making a joke about Trump performing a sex act on Vladimir Putin, Hannity said boycotts are “really just a roundabout way to silence opposition voices.”
Yet Hannity showed nothing but love for Nunes’ attack on McClatchy. “Wasn’t this the same McClatchy that said that Michael Cohen was in Prague when I knew where Michael Cohen was?…. He was in Los Angeles with his son?” Hannity sneered. “He never was in Prague and they doubled down on stupid.”
This from the guy who has yet to apologize to Seth Rich’s family after falsely accusing the murdered DNC staffer of leaking stolen DNC material to Wikileaks. Hannity is also the guy who repeatedly promoted Donald Trump’s bogus birther attacks.
“We’re coming after the rest of them,” Nunes said ominously. “I’m coming to clean up.” Too bad he doesn't feel the same concern for the Rich family.
Hannity’s First Amendment-loving reaction? “I would add to the list, you know, the cowardly [Rep. Adam] Schiff,” he said pointedly. "I have a dossier on Schiff.” Schiff just happens to be the congressman who took over the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee from Nunes after Democrats took back the House of Representatives in 2018.
Nunes smirked with approval but said, “I can’t sue him.”
Watch Hannity’s love for free speech vanish like Trump’s promise to release his tax returns below, from the April 8, 2019 Hannity. Underneath, Napolitano explains why Nunes almost certainly has no case.
I guess if it’s good enough for the ‘president’…