Devin Nunes files lawsuit because people were mean on Twitter

What a special snowflake.

Rep. Devin Nunes — the California Republican who ran defense for the Trump administration when he led the House Intelligence Committee’s sham Russia investigation for two years — filed a frivolous lawsuit against Twitter on Tuesday, claiming Twitter allowed a pair of fake accounts to send mean tweets about him.

In the over-the-top lawsuit — in which Nunes is seeking a ridiculous $250 million — Nunes says the tweets from the accounts were so mean “that no human being should ever have to bear and suffer in their whole life.” Nunes also accuses Twitter of “shadow-banning conservatives.”

The accounts — @DevinNunesMom and @DevinCow — posted hilarious burns against Nunes. One of the accounts, @DevinNunesMom — a parody account impersonating Nunes’ mother — says Nunes was so busy “cradling the president’s balls full time” that he no longer had time for his constituents.

The account also posted a graphic “diagram” about how the relationship between Nunes, Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin worked. (We won’t describe the diagram here, but it can be found on page 18 of the 40-page complaint.)

Of course, public figures have a far higher bar to prove libel or slander. And given that Nunes is a very public figure, it will be hard to prove that mean tweets from throwaway Twitter accounts amount to anything other than mean tweets.

There’s even a law on the books that may protect social media sites like Twitter from being held liable for tweets sent by accounts on its site.

In the end, all the lawsuit may have accomplished is drawing attention to otherwise obscure Twitter accounts that no one cared about until Nunes filed his dumb lawsuit.

Maybe Nunes will finally learn his lesson about the Streisand Effect.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.