Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) has sued CNN for over $435 million in a defamation suit filed on Tuesday in Virginia.
The 47-page lawsuit opened by calling CNN “the mother of fake news” that was “eroding the fabric of America” and claimed that the network published a “demonstrably false hit piece” about Nunes on Nov. 22. The article reported that Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas was willing to testify that Nunes had met with a former top Ukrainian prosecutor last year in Vienna to “discuss digging up dirt on Joe Biden.” (Nunes had “declined repeated requests for comment” for the piece.)
Nunes’s suit said that Parnas was a “fraudster and a hustler” and that Nunes has never met the Ukrainian prosecutor, nor was he in Vienna during that timeframe. Nunes claims that CNN’s report caused him “insult, pain, embarrassment, humiliation, mental suffering, injury to his reputation, special damages, costs, and other out-of-pocket expenses.” He is seeking compensatory and punitive damages amounting to at least $435,350,000.
This isn’t the first time Nunes has sued for defamation: In March, the GOP congressman sued Twitter for $250 million after a number of Nunes parody accounts gained popularity. The following month, Nunes sued McClatchy newspapers for $150 million over a story that reported on a company partially owned by Nunes.
A spokesperson for CNN declined to comment.