Senior aide to Rep. Devin Nunes and attorney face court sanctions in CNN lawsuit
A federal judge this week sanctioned a senior aide to Rep. Devin Nunes and his attorney, ordering them to pay legal fees in a lawsuit they filed against CNN regarding a news story about the California congressman.
The attorney facing sanctions, Steven S. Biss, has also represented Nunes in lawsuits against CNN, The Washington Post, McClatchy and Twitter, among others.
Derek Harvey, a retired Army colonel and a senior aide to Nunes, filed the lawsuit against CNN, alleging the network had defamed him in an article it published concerning the first impeachment of former President Donald Trump.
Judge Richard Bennett of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland dismissed Harvey’s lawsuit in February, finding Harvey had failed to prove any statements were “materially false.”
Bennett handed down sanctions against Harvey and Biss after they filed an amended complaint seeking to have him reconsider his dismissal of the lawsuit.
Bennett on Wednesday wrote Biss’ filing did not meet legal standards for an amended complaint.
“This Court finds that Plaintiff Harvey’s filing of the Amended Complaint unreasonably multiplied the proceedings in this case, and this Court is satisfied that it is appropriate to impose a sanction as to the Plaintiff and his counsel under this court’s inherent authority and (federal law),” Bennett wrote in his decision to apply sanctions.
He ordered Harvey and Biss to pay CNN’s court costs and legal fees, writing that the amended complaint had been filed in “bad faith.” Biss and Harvey can appeal the sanctions.
Bennett said in multiple rulings that Harvey’s lawsuit had more to do with Nunes, R-Tulare, than with Harvey. That’s significant because plaintiffs in defamation lawsuits must demonstrate how they were harmed by the material to recover damages from the organizations they sue.
“In fact, this Court was hard pressed to see how several of the allegedly defamatory statements cited in Harvey’s original Complaint had much to do with the Plaintiff at all, as they focused almost entirely on the actions of Congressman Nunes,” Bennett wrote.
CNN wrote that Nunes had instructed Harvey to meet with an associate of Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani in an effort to find information in Ukraine that could be used against President Joe Biden in last year’s election. The Giuliani associate, Lev Parnas, told CNN through his lawyer he had spoken to and met with Harvey multiple times.
Harvey alleged CNN, Parnas and and Parnas’ lawyer had defamed him in the article, saying they had falsely accused him of participating in an effort to aid and abet the commission of criminal, unethical and dishonest conduct.
Nunes sued CNN over similar reporting, alleging a CNN report that he had traveled to Vienna to dig up political dirt on Biden was false. A federal judge in the Southern District of New York dismissed that lawsuit in February.
Nunes and Biss have appealed his lawsuit against CNN to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. It is currently pending.
Nunes, an ally to former President Donald Trump, in 2018 began suing media companies alleging they participated in conspiracies to damage his reputation. Judges have dismissed his lawsuits against Twitter, Republican strategist Liz Mair, The Washington Post and Ryan Lizza, a journalist who wrote about Nunes for Esquire Magazine.
Nunes has either re-filed or appealed in those cases. Nunes has dropped a lawsuit against a retired farmer from his district and a separate lawsuit against McClatchy, the parent company of the largest newspaper in his district, The Fresno Bee.
Other lawsuits are still pending. Nunes has not been sanctioned in any of his lawsuits.
This story was originally published April 2, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Senior aide to Rep. Devin Nunes and attorney face court sanctions in CNN lawsuit."
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