‘CNN is the mother of fake news. It is the least trusted name…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., has filed a defamation lawsuit against CNN, seeking $435 million in punitive damages after the outlet published a false story that alleged Nunes had met with Ukrainian officials in an attempt to dig up dirt on Joe Biden, which he says is false.
CNN published a report last month based off of the allegations of Lev Parnas, a business associate of Rudy Giuliani who is facing several federal charges in New York.
Parnas claimed Nunes had met with former Ukrainian Prosecutor-General Viktor Shokin last December to obtain damaging information about Biden and the Ukrainian oil company Burisma.
Nunes denied the claims and said in his lawsuit that he “has never met Viktor Shokin.”
“This meeting never took place. Viktor Shokin doesn’t know and hasn’t even heard of Devin Nunes,” the lawsuit reads, according to the Washington Times. “Devin Nunes did not go to Vienna or anywhere else in Austria in 2018 … Devin Nunes did not communicate with Parnas in December 2018.”
Nunes discredited Parnas’s allegations by pointing out that Parnas has always been a “fraudster and a hustler.”
“It was obvious that his lies were part of a thinly-veiled attempt to obstruct justice and to trick either the United States Attorney or House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) into offering ‘immunity’ in return for ‘information’ about Plaintiff — a prominent United States Congressman and Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee,” the lawsuit states.
As a result of CNN’s report, the House Ethics Committee is considering launching a full-scale investigation into Nunes, according to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith, D-Wash.
CNN has stood by its reporting, even though it did not independently verify Parnas’s claims.
“CNN is the mother of fake news,” Nunes’s lawsuit states. “It is the least trusted name. CNN is eroding the fabric of America, proselytizing, sowing distrust and disharmony. It must be held accountable.”
