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Devin Nunes (left) and Rachel Maddow.
Devin Nunes sued the award-winning MSNBC host in 2021, when he was still a member of Congress.
A federal judge has dismissed former Republican California U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes’s defamation lawsuit against MSNBC host Rachel Maddow and NBCUniversal, ruling the network did not act with “actual malice” in reporting that Nunes refused to turn over a package from a sanctioned Russian agent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
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In a 24-page opinion issued Friday, U.S. District Judge Kevin Castel granted summary judgment to NBCUniversal, writing that “no reasonable jury could find that NBCU made the statement with constitutionally-defined actual malice.”
Nunes, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump and chief executive officer of his social media company, filed the lawsuit in 2021 after an episode of The Rachel Maddow Show aired a segment about a package addressed to Nunes from Ukrainian legislator Andrii Derkach. Derkach was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2020 for acting as a Russian agent and attempting to interfere in the 2020 presidential election.
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Maddow told viewers that Nunes “has refused to hand [the package] 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,” relying on a news story by Politico.
According to court documents, Nunes and members of his staff testified that the package was turned over to the FBI on the same day it was received. Nunes also sent a letter to then-Attorney General William Barr advising him of the package’s arrival.
The court acknowledged that Nunes disputed the truth of Maddow’s statement but said he failed to meet the high burden required of public figures in defamation cases. Under U.S. Supreme Court precedent, public officials must prove a defamatory statement was made with knowledge of its falsity or with reckless disregard for the truth.
“Maddow and Gnazzo both testified that they believed Politico was a reputable publication and that the authors of the article were well respected,” the judge wrote, referring to Maddow and her executive producer, Cory Gnazzo, and a July 23, 2020, Politico article they cited in support of the segment.
That article reported that “one person familiar with the matter said the information was not turned over to the FBI” and that Nunes had declined to comment.
“The statement that information had not been turned over to the FBI is tantamount to a ‘refusal,’” Castel wrote. “NBCU’s choice of phrasing does not negate its reliance on the Politico article and does not rise to actual malice.”
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Castel rejected Nunes’s arguments that Maddow and MSNBC distorted the Politico reporting and ignored other news stories that stated the package had been appropriately handled. According to the ruling, Maddow and Gnazzo said they were not aware of a follow-up article quoting a fellow Republican lawmaker saying the package had been turned over to the FBI.
Nunes also argued that Maddow’s long history of criticizing him, identifying 36 episodes in which she discussed him by name, proved personal bias. But Castel wrote that “bare assertions of bias are insufficient” and found no evidence that the statement at issue was published with a “high degree of awareness of ... probable falsity.”
“In context, Maddow’s reference to Nunes as an ‘easier hit’ refers to Maloney’s information that there was a package receipt for the delivery to Nunes from Derkach, which provided ready support for part of the claim,” Castel wrote, referencing Rep. Sean Maloney’s comments during a prior MSNBC interview.
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The court also addressed NBCUniversal’s request for sanctions against Nunes for alleged spoliation of evidence. According to court documents, Nunes did not instruct his staff to preserve emails or records after leaving Congress in early 2022.
But with the defamation claim dismissed, Castel said the court “need not adopt an adverse inference or otherwise sanction Nunes for spoliation.”
Nunes left the House in January 2022 to become CEO of Trump’s social media company, Truth Social.
Reached by The Advocate, representatives for Maddow and MSNBC declined to comment.
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