Prickly Donald Trump supporter Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) was skewered on Twitter Sunday for threatening to sue media outlets for reporting that he met with a Ukrainian prosecutor over corruption concerns to get dirt on Joe Biden.
The ensuing uproar sent the hashtag “Nunes Resign” trending on Twitter.
CNN reported Saturday that Rudy Giuliani’s indicted crony Lev Parnas is willing to testify to Congress that Nunes met last year with former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin in a hunt for negative information on Biden. Congressional records reveal that Nunes and three aides flew to Europe for a four-day trip at the same time Parnas said the meeting occurred at a cost of $63,000.
Shokin was forced out of office by Ukraine Parliament in 2016 following pressure from the U.S., spearheaded by then-Vice President Biden, and other Western allies over concerns about corruption.
If true, such actions by Nunes, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, are “arguably a crime,” former federal prosecutor Elie Honig warned on CNN Saturday. “It’s a federal crime for a person to try to solicit something of value to a political campaign from a foreign national,” Honig noted.
Nunes has flatly blasted the reports as “demonstrably false,” but he hasn’t offered any specifics. Instead, he is threatening to sue CNN and the Daily Beast, which first reported the Parnas information.
Nunes has a reputation for hair-trigger lawsuits. He once sued Twitter over parody accounts mocking him, including the infamous Devin Nunes’ Cow account. He also sued activists who characterized him as a fake farmer following reports that his family farm is located in Iowa, thousands of miles from his California home.
