Devin Nunes' Favorite Lawyer On The Hook For Over $20k In Sanctions

from the pay-up-biss dept

Last month we wrote that Rep. Devin Nunes' favorite lawyer, Steven Biss, who has been filing frivolous, vexatious SLAPP suit after frivolous, vexatious SLAPP suit, was finally facing some sanctions. The specific case did not directly involve Nunes, but rather one of his aides, Derek Harvey, who had filed a ridiculous SLAPP suit against CNN. As we wrote last month, the court had easily tossed the original lawsuit and warned Biss not to file an amended complaint unless he had a credible legal theory. Biss did not have a credible legal theory, but he still filed an amended complaint. And thus, the court issued sanctions, saying that Harvey, Biss and other lawyers would be on the hook for CNN's legal fees.

The latest filing in the case is the bill coming due. Harvey and Biss need to pay CNN $21,437.50 in legal fees (and an additional $52.26 in costs and expenses). That might not seem like that much in the grand scheme of things (especially for a lawyer who has claimed his client, Devin Nunes, is owed over a billion dollars for defamation, but it is still real money that someone is going to need to pay -- though it remains an open question as to who is actually going to pay it).

There's not much to see in the ruling itself, as it basically says that the fees CNN's lawyers outlined are within the standards that the court's local rules say are "presumptively reasonable." The lawyers admit that they're actually asking for less than they normally charge in order to keep them "reasonable" in the Court's eyes, and the Court basically says "sounds good."

It does often seem that lawyers who file tons of frivolous and vexatious lawsuits are able to get away with it for a while, with courts giving them many, many chances and being extremely reluctant to issue sanctions. And, even when sanctions are issued, they tend to be relatively low. However, with such repeat offenders, we've often seen that courts across the country take notice, and once one court has sanctioned this kind of behavior, it can open the floodgates. We'll see what happens in other Biss lawsuits.

Filed Under: derek harvey, devin nunes, legal fees, sanctions, slapp, steven biss
Companies: cnn

Report: Devin Nunes' Aide Going Around Leaking Ukraine Call Whistleblower's Name

from the proper-channels dept

We've been highlighting lately how the situation with the whistleblower, who first tried to ring the alarm bells about President Trump's now confirmed quid pro quo call with Ukraine to dig up dirt on a political opponent, showed why the "official channels" are useless for whistleblowers. Some suggested that we were premature in making that claim. However, since then, we've seen the President himself repeatedly try to attack the whistleblower while repeatedly demanding that the whistleblower be revealed. Now come reports that a staffer for Rep. Devin Nunes is going around revealing the name of the whistleblower:

A top aide to Rep. Devin Nunes has been providing conservative politicians and journalists with information—and misinformation—about the anonymous whistleblower who triggered the biggest crisis of Donald Trump’s presidency, two knowledgeable sources tell The Daily Beast.

Derek Harvey, who works for Nunes, the ranking Republican on the House intelligence committee, has provided notes for House Republicans identifying the whistleblower’s name ahead of the high-profile depositions of Trump administration appointees and civil servants in the impeachment inquiry. The purpose of the notes, one source said, is to get the whistleblower’s name into the record of the proceedings, which committee chairman Adam Schiff has pledged to eventually release. In other words: it’s an attempt to out the anonymous official who helped trigger the impeachment inquiry.

Nunes, of course, has a bit of a history pushing mis- and dis-information in support of President Trump, so this seems par for the course. In the Daily Beast link above, one of the lawyers for the whistleblower, Mark Zaid, notes that revealing the name only serves to put the whistleblower in danger and seems to aim to "deter future whistleblowers from coming forward."

So, once again, it highlights exactly what we've been saying. Even in this case, where the whistleblower tried to use the "proper channels," everything is designed to go against the whistleblower, starting with the failure to turn over the complaint to Congress, as required by the law. The fact that a Nunes staffer is now apparently putting that whistleblower "at risk of harm" (according to Zaid) highlights just how ill-prepared our government is to deal with whistleblowers at a time when we need more, not fewer, whistleblowers.

Filed Under: cia, derek harvey, devin nunes, leaks, proper channels, ukraine, whistleblower