-Devin Nunes has filed a number of civil complaints
against Twitter, against the McClatchy newspaper,
and against Esquire, Hearst Magazine.
-Suing a Twitter user known as Devin Nunes' Mom.
-That's not the only parody account Nunes called out.
He also name checked Devin Nunes' cow.
-He is basically using the courts to stifle free speech,
to stifle criticism of himself.
This is the very activity that we have major
Supreme Court precedent for.
-This is the mother of all fake news stories.
-Congressman Devin Nunes, he is taking action,
filing a bombshell defamation lawsuit against CNN
after they published an alleged false story
about Nunes traveling to Vienna
to dig up dirt on Quid-Pro-Quo Joe.
-I think the interesting thing about the CNN suit
is it may be the only one of this crop
in which CNN may rely on the New York Times v.
Sullivan standard as a defense.
Because there could be, according to Nunes,
some falsehoods here.
He says he didn't travel to Vienna.
-When they said that I was in Vienna,
I was actually in Benghazi.
I was the first member of Congress
to be back in Benghazi since after the attacks,
meeting with General Haftar.
Then I went from there to Malta
to actually participate in a repatriation ceremony.
-New York Times/Sullivan is the landmark Supreme Court case
that arose from a suit against the New York Times
for an advertisement, which basically is built on the idea
if you're a public official and you want to bring a libel
or defamation case a news organization,
you have to clear a higher hurdle.
And that is actual malice.
You have to prove that the news organization
not only published falsehoods but published
damaging falsehoods that they knew to be false,
or that they proceeded with reckless disregard
of the falsity or truth.
The New York Times/Sullivan
ruling is tremendously important.
Our press is so critical to the democracy
that it has to approach these people fearlessly.
If New York Times v.
Sullivan gets taken down some time in the distant future,
yeah, I think our democracy would be infirm.
This is a time when all kinds of politicians,
mostly President Trump, are breaking norms.
-I'm gonna open up our libel laws
so when they write purposely negative
and horrible and false articles,
we can sue them and win lots of money.
-I see mistakes, yes. I see problems here and there.
But I don't see an epidemic of recklessness
in the American media.
In fact, I think if there's an epidemic,
it's oftentimes that
it's an epidemic of restraint and overcautiousness.
Powerful people in this country already have extensive
means to push back on sort of critical coverage
before it's published.
You saw this in the Weinstein case.
I believe his list of alleged sexual harassers
is in the 80s or 90s.
He had been able to keep news organizations
from publishing these truths for decades.
Same thing with Jeffrey Epstein.
There were numerous organizations
that bounced off the Jeffery Epstein story
before the Miami Herald finally nailed it.
And you can see this hesitancy on a broader level, I believe,
with respect to Trump's lying.
News organizations have always been very careful
about calling him a liar
or "This is a lie" or "That is a lie."
Same hesitancy applies to his racism.
He has been racist for many years now,
going all the way back to the Central Park Five
and so on and so forth.
But news organizations have been hesitant
to not only call him racist
but his actions and his words racist.
There is a great, great sense
in the US mainstream media of restraint.
-There was no objectivity or fairness
in the media's rush of stories,
just as a fevered rush to tarnish
and remove a president who refuses to pretend
that the media are something different
from what they really are -- puppets of the Democratic Party.
-Devin Nunes has become a symbol of the degree
to which bashing the media's become an industry.
He has seen how Trump has thrived by hammering the media,
and he's just said, "Well, why don't I do that?
Why don't I just go ahead and do that?"
And why wouldn't he?
A man has become president by doing basically the same thing.