Roll Call

Rep. Devin Nunes says he filed suit in Virginia state court on Monday against Twitter, a conservative [NOT conservative – she’s Republican] political operative and two anonymous Twitter accounts, alleging a conspiracy to defame him and oust him from political office.

The California Republican seeks $250 million in compensatory and punitive damages for “pain, insult, embarrassment, humiliation, emotional distress and mental suffering, and injury to his personal and professional reputations,” according to the complaint, which was first reported by Fox News.

California GOP Rep. Devin Nunes filed a major lawsuit seeking $250 million in compensatory damages and $350,000 in punitive damages against Twitter and a handful of its users on Monday, accusing the social media site of “shadow-banning conservatives” to secretly hide their posts, systematically censoring opposing viewpoints, and totally “ignoring” lawful complaints of repeated abusive behavior.

A Republican political consultant based in Arlington County, Virginia, Liz Mair, is responsible for a slew of defamatory statements about Nunes, the congressman claims, as well as two parody accounts impersonating his mother and a cow, the 22nd District Republican said.

Some of the insults by the account @DevinNunesMom he describes as part of a “vicious defamation campaign” include allegations that he has “white supremacist friends,” that he is a “treasonous Putin shill,” and that he is “covering up Trump’s conspiracy against the United States.” Many of the tweets relayed in the complaint are lewd, including tweets depicting Nunes as a cocaine addict, as having a sexually transmitted disease and as having “engaged in sexual acts with the president.” …

And Twitter actively participated in the scheme, Nunes claims. The platform censored or “shadow banned” his account in order to diminish his voice and “amplify the voices of his Democratic detractors,” and failed to enforce its terms of service by not banning the parody accounts, the congressman alleges.