Devin Nunes Twitter Lawsuit

Overview

Devin Nunes Twitter Lawsuit refers to a $250 million suit filed by Republican Congressman Devin Nunes of California against Twitter for allegedly enabling defamation that harmed his chances in the 2018 midterm elections and his investigation into Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russian involvement in the 2016 elections. However, many mocked the substance of the lawsuit, which demanded the unmasking of two Devin Nunes parody accounts, @DevinNunesMom and @DevinCow, whose existence Nunes claimed was "(a part of Twitter's) agenda to squelch Nunes’ voice, cause him extreme pain and suffering, influence the 2018 Congressional election, and distract, intimidate and interfere with Nunes’ investigation into corruption and Russian involvement in the 2016 Presidential Election."

Background

On March 19th, 2019, Devin Nunes filed a lawsuit in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia for $250 million against Twitter. The suit alleges that Twitter has worked to harm his chances in the 2018 midterm elections by Shadow Banning him and enabling defamation against him. The suit's defendants include the person behind parody Twitter account "@DevinNunesMom" and the one behind "@DevinCow" and GOP communications strategist Liz Mair.^[1] According to the suit, the three were working together in conspiracy, perhaps with Democratic party donors.

Developments

Later on Sean Hannity, Nunes stated:

"How is it possible that I can be attacked relentlessly, hundreds of times a day by fake accounts that they claim in their terms of service should not be there? So I guarantee you if I put something out that was sexually explicit or attacked someone personally, they would stop it. They would say, 'This is a sensitive tweet.' They never did that to any of the people that were coming after me or other conservatives."

Meanwhile, Twitter users looked into some of the tweets by the parody accounts Nunes complained against. One of the ones specified by Nunes showed a "Human Centipede" trail between Vladmir Putin, Donald Trump and Nunes tweeted by @DevinNunesMom (shown below, left). @DevinCow gained hundreds of thousands of followers following the suit, and people saw that most of tweets were criticisms of Nunes with cow puns (shown below, right).

News organizations mostly found the suit frivolous. In an article called "Devin Nunes Sues Twitter for Allowing Accounts to Insult Him," The New York Times^[2] wrote about the lawsuit. The Daily Dot^[3] wrote "@NunesCow" caused Nunes 'extreme pain and suffering' by calling him a 'treasonous cowpoke' and an 'udder-ly worthless' criminal." They also pointed out that the law states that platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube should not be treated as publishers in the same way a news organization would be, and that they are not responsible for the content their users.

DevinCow

Prior to the lawsuit, @DevinCow had roughly 1,200 followers.^[2] Following the lawsuit, @DevinCow became much more popular, quickly gaining hundreds of thousands of followers. On March 19th, The Ellen Degeneres Show producer Andy Lassner posted a tweet encouraging people to follow @DevinCow in the hope of getting the account more followers than Nunes himself (shown below).^[4]

The plan was picked up by major celebrities including Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel, who both tweeted about the incident, with Kimmel encouraging his followers to follow the parody account (shown below).

By March 20th, the plan worked, with @DevinCow gaining more than Nunes' 397,000 followers. As of March 21st, @DevinCow has over 593,000 followers. The story was covered by Huffington Post^[5] and Uproxx.^[6]

#ProtectTheCow

On May 7th, 2019, @DevinCow tweeted that they were getting mass reported and may be shut down.^[11] The account said it was getting mass reported in protest of Twitter shutting down another account, speculated to be an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez parody account.

After the tweet, Twitter users launched the hashtag #ProtectTheCow to save the account from what they saw as a bad faith troll campaign to shut it down. User @TimForgot^[12] wrote that the account was intentionally inoffensive and "refreshingly civil," gaining over 1,800 retweets and 5,400 likes (shown below, left). Andy Lassner^[13] tweeted #ProtectTheCow was "the most important fight of the day," gaining over 4,600 retweets and 9,000 likes (shown below, right). The story was covered by Daily Kos.^[14]

#YachtCocaineProstitutes

On May 23rd, 2018, the Fresno Bee^[7] news outlet published that article "A yacht, cocaine, prostitutes: Winery partly owned by Nunes sued after fundraiser event." The article alleges that at a charity event hosted by the Nunes-affiliated Alpha Omega Winery, guests were seen doing cocaine and engaging with sex workers. Nunes is an investor in the winery.

The article states that former Alene Anase Alpha Omega-employee had observed the illegal activity and later reached a settlement with the winery. The Fresno Bee reports:

Anase alleges that on the Aug. 12, 2015 cruise she could hear sexual activity happening in the yacht’s bedrooms and witnessed men “fondling and suckling” sex workers’ breasts -- some who appeared to be “too young to consent.

The director of communications for Alpha Omega Kelly Carter denied Nunes' involvement in the event. In an email, she wrote:

Rep. Devin Nunes is one of a few friends (Baggett) invited to invest in the winery in 2005. None of the investors has ever been involved with the management of the company. Robin is the sole managing partner and ultimate decision maker at Alpha Omega.

The following year, on April 9th, 2019, Nunes filed a $150 million against the Fresno Bee's publisher McClatchy and the story's reporter MacKenzie Mays.^[8] In response to news of the lawsuit, people on Twitter drew attention to the salacious aspects of the story by using the hashtag #YachtCocaineProstitutes.^[9]

That day, Ellen producer Andy Lassner tweeted,^[10] "Please DO NOT use the hashtag #YachtCocaineProstitutes in reference to @DevinNunes. He does not like it. Thank you. #YachtCocaineProstitutes." Within 24 hours, the tweet received more than 12,000 retweets and 28,000 likes in 24 hours (shown below, left).

Throughout the day, people continued to post about the hashtag and its connection to Nunes (shown below, center and right).

Twitter Lawsuit Dismissal

On June 25th, 2020, Judge John Marshall of the Virginia Circuit Court dismissed the lawsuit against Twitter, stating that under Section 230 of the Internet Communications Decency Act platforms are not liable for user comments, in this case, the parody accounts Devin Nunes Cow and Devin Nunes Mom, as well as GOP strategist Liz Mair.^[15] As of June 2020, the lawsuits against the accounts and Mair were still pending.

Judge Marshall writes:

[Nunes] seeks to have the court treat Twitter as the publisher or speaker of the content provided by others based on its allowing or not allowing certain content to be on its internet platform. The court refuses to do so.

Search Interest

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External References