Devin Nunes Loses Yet Another One Of His SLAPP Suits

from the keep-'em-coming dept

A little over a year ago, a DC watchdog group had asked the Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate Rep. Devin Nunes over his total failure to disclose who the hell is paying for all of his various frivolous SLAPP suits. As the group, Campaign Legal Center noted, Congress is forbidden from receiving free legal services unless they have set up a Legal Expense Fund -- and at least at the time of the investigation request, Nunes had not done so, despite having filed a bunch of lawsuits over the previous year.

As far as I can tell, nothing ever happened regarding that, but the issue is again worth exploring. Devin Nunes has been losing his lawsuits (badly) but continuing to push on with them anyway. In the fall of 2019, Nunes sued Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson claiming racketeering (It's Not RICO, Dammit), because (he bizarrely claimed) they were harassing Nunes by filing a different ethics complaint against him. Nunes had some silly story about how Fusion GPS was trying to "interfere" with his "investigation." The "investigation" being Nunes' laughable attempt to argue that the Steele Dossier was illegal.

Anyway, a year ago that case was easiliy dismissed with the court warning Nunes' lawyer Steven Biss that, while he could refile, if they didn't add more substance to the complaint, they may face Rule 11 sanctions. In a move that will surprise no one, Biss/Nunes still filed an amended complaint last April. Now the case has been dismissed again. For reasons that I'm not clear on, over the summer the case was reassigned to a different judge, and that's why the new dismissal is from Judge Rossie Alston, rather than Judge Liam O'Grady, who handled the first dismissal.

The judge does the basic "It's Not RICO, Dammit" analysis to highlight that the Nunes/Biss claims of racketeering are ridiculous:

Here, Plaintiff fails to plausibly plead an association-in-fact enterprise because the Second Amended Complaint does not sufficiently allege the three structural features critical to support a RICO enterprise allegation. Both the Second Amended Complaint and Plaintiff’s Opposition merely recite the elements of an association-in-fact enterprise and allege only conclusory facts.

Critically, no reading of the facts alleged in Plaintiff’s Second Amended complaint can support a finding that an enterprise operated with the purpose or relationships the law requires.... Instead, the Second Amended Complaint is best read to allege that Defendants and the three other individuals and entities named in that document engaged in independent, parallel conduct directed at Plaintiff Nunes. By Plaintiff’s own telling, the entities and persons involved had different memberships and methods—even assuming they all shared the same generalized “motive” to harm Plaintiff’s political career. On its face, this is insufficient evidence of an association-in-fact enterprise with a shared purpose.... The only connection Plaintiff alleges between Defendants and Campaign for Accountability, McClatchy, and Mair is that Defendants “chose CfA, Mair and McClatchy” as “fronts or ‘cut-outs’ to carry out the obstruction scheme.”... These rote allegations that Defendants “operated” and “conducted the business of the enterprise” are unsupported by any specific facts. At best, Plaintiff alleges “consciously parallel conduct, which is not sufficient to satisfy Twombly’s pleading standard[.]”

There's a lot more, but this is the same reason the original complaint got tossed out. The judge also notes that the basis of Nunes' RICO claim is that... people filed an ethics complaint against him. The judge appears to raise his eyebrows at this concept:

Before analyzing the specific predicate acts, the Court acknowledges that Plaintiff’s case rests on importing a wholly novel set of facts—ethics complaints submitted against a sitting congressperson and providing research on that lawmaker to a news outlet for publication—into the civil RICO context.

Over and over and over again, the court finds that Biss just made a bunch of unsubstantiated claims that can't possibly be RICO. And thus, in the end:

All told, Plaintiff has failed to establish that the facts set forth in his Second Amended Complaint add up to form a single RICO predicate act. The Court reaches this conclusion having considered, as it must when deciding a motion to dismiss, the facts alleged in the light most favorable to Plaintiff

Given that Judge O'Grady had already warned Biss and Nunes that filing more of this nonsense may lead to Rule 11 sanctions, perhaps you'd expect Judge Alston to follow through on that threat. Unfortunately, as is all too often the case, the judge has decided to go easy on Biss (despite the fact that he keeps filing so many sketchy lawsuits). The defendants in the case even highlighted to the judge Biss' and Nunes' track record of filing all these bogus SLAPP suits. And, even so, the court lets them off the hook:

The Court declines to impose sanctions under Rule 11 at this time. The allegations made by Plaintiff are serious. They just cannot and do not confer authority to this Court to address the complaints Plaintiff has made. In this regard, Plaintiff’s counsel is reminded that litigation “asserted in bad faith or for the purpose of harassment” may be met with sanctions. ... Here, Plaintiff’s counsel has filed three complaints in this case since September of 2019. The Court has not issued a favorable ruling on any of the claims Plaintiff asserts. Accordingly, the Court’s dismissal of Plaintiff’s RICO claims is with prejudice and without leave to amend because in the Court’s view, amendment would be futile

So... why no sanctions? No further explanation is given. This is, unfortunately, par for the course. As we've seen over and over and over again, lawyers tend to have to have a reputation for filing dozens of these kinds of bogus lawsuits before courts finally start issuing sanctions.

So, no, Devin, it's not RICO, and you and Biss got off lucky (again!) this time, even though you still lost, like you've lost all of these lawsuits. And many of us are still wondering, who is paying for all of this wasteful, vexatious litigation?

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Filed Under: 1st amendment, anti-slapp, devin nunes, free speech, glenn simpson, rico, sanctions, slapp, steven biss
Companies: fusion gps


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  • icon
    That One Guy (profile), 5 Apr 2021 @ 3:56pm

    Ah to be treated like a lawyer...

    ... where the assumption is that you're smart enough to make legal filings and bring lawsuits, but too stupid/selfless to ever abuse the system for personal gain.

    Even after being warned that continued abuse of the system might result in some form of punishment, and the new judge outright admitting that that's a possible consequence for such behavior they're still let off with nothing more than being told that the case is so dead that nothing can salvage it and is therefore dismissed with prejudice.

    Rulings and judges like this are why lawyers and those that employ them feel so safe weaponizing the legal system for personal gain, because they rightly feel safe in assuming that there's no penalty for doing so.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Bobvious, 5 Apr 2021 @ 4:38pm

      Re: Ah to be treated like a lawyer...

      "Rulings and judges like this are why lawyers and those that employ them feel so safe weaponizing the legal system for personal gain, because they rightly feel safe in assuming that there's no penalty for doing so."

      That's because they're operating with Qualified Impunity

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      That Anonymous Coward (profile), 5 Apr 2021 @ 7:08pm

      Re: Ah to be treated like a lawyer...

      I dunno I still think I want to be treated like a cop, lawyers can just run up other peoples bills, lie to courts...

      Cops get to run up other peoples bills, lie to courts, shoot people, steal from them, sexually brutalize, & a host of other really bad things and boom QI means you walk away.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • icon
        That One Guy (profile), 5 Apr 2021 @ 9:32pm

        Re: Re: Ah to be treated like a lawyer...

        Hmm, a fair if horrible point, as much crap as lawyers get away with at least the actions they are given a pass on seldom involve a body count

        link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Toom1275 (profile), 5 Apr 2021 @ 8:48pm

      Re: Ah to be treated like a lawyer...

      It's past time one of these judges puts Biss out to pasture.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Stephen T. Stone (profile), 5 Apr 2021 @ 5:01pm

    Always nice to see Nunes get SLAPP’d around by a court of law.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Ed (profile), 6 Apr 2021 @ 7:45am

    Where's the meme...

    ... of Putin writing a check. It's always, "follow the money".

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Norahc (profile), 6 Apr 2021 @ 9:15am

    The only lawsuits the Dynamic Dipshits of Devin Nunes and Steven Bliss have won are the ones they don't file.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it
    icon
    restless94110 (profile), 6 Apr 2021 @ 1:35pm

    Slap

    So instead of addressing the law suits, let's try to use a SLAPP suit to figure out where Nunes is getting his money?

    Because, who cares what Nunes is saying? I mean he's a conservative so obviously he has no relevant points to make, and absolutely no reason to sue anyone!

    He's just a venal fool that no one (especially no judge) should ever listen to.

    In fact the only people we should ever listen to ever are people like Rachel Maddow. I mean she has more "truthiness" in her little finger than one of the foremost US Representatives in American History.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 6 Apr 2021 @ 5:57pm

      Re: Slap

      Your boy lost, get over yourself.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Stephen T. Stone (profile), 6 Apr 2021 @ 6:41pm

      If Nunes’s own SLAPP suits result in him being slapped with fines via anti-SLAPP laws, someone will have to pay those fines. Chances are good that it won’t be Nunes himself, but whoever is bankrolling his plans to unmask anonymous critics vis-á-vis the filing of strategic lawsuits against public participation. That might be of interest to the courts, the people Nunes is suing, the general public, and possibly an ethics committee or three.

      Nunes doesn’t deserve any special privileges because he is a conservative. The law must apply equally to people across the political strata, even if you agree with one of them and wish harm upon that one person’s critics.

      Also: I’m surprised you didn’t throw in an anti-queer slur when you mentioned Maddow. I thought conservatives didn’t like those people.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Toom1275 (profile), 6 Apr 2021 @ 8:08pm

    Nunes, with his infamous fiction-based "memo," established that he'd sell bullshit for politics.

    Everything he's done since then has only been to dig deeper.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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