(Photo by Gage Skidmore, from Wikimedia Commons – licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license)
Republican Congressman Devin Nunes, who represents California’s 22nd Congressional District, announced Dec. 6 that he would be retiring from the U.S. House at the end of the year. Nunes additionally stated that he will be joining the newly formed former President Donald Trump’s new media group.
Trump Media & Technology announced in a separate statement that Nunes would serve as chief executive officer beginning in January 2022. “Devin understands that we must stop the liberal media and Big Tech from destroying the freedoms that make America great,” Trump said in a statement.
The company is preparing to launch a social media platform which it claims will rival Twitter, which had blocked the former president as a result of some of his tweets during and after the insurrection and attempted take over of the U.S. Capitol last January.
“The time has come to reopen the Internet and allow for the free flow of ideas and expression without censorship. The United States of America made the dream of the Internet a reality and it will be an American company that restores the dream,” Nunes said.
The California Citizens Redistricting Commission, which is tasked with redrawing district boundaries has released draft maps, in the once every 10 years realignment of congressional districts, that could have caused Nunes severe headache in a reelection bid had he decided to run again.
One of the former president’s ardent loyalists, Nunes has repeatedly been at the center of controversy during his entire career on the Hill. In addition to his support of Trump, he has been openly antagonistic towards the LGBTQ community.
In 2010, Nunes voted against the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the law that prohibited gays from serving openly in the U.S. military. He also consistently received a “0” rating on LGBTQ issues from the Human Rights Campaign’s Congressional Scorecard, which has a rating scale of 0 to 100.
He opposed legal recognition of same-sex marriage and he has refused to back any LGBTQ legislation.
Over the years he has also been involved in a series of high-profile lawsuits, including a 2019 $435 million defamation lawsuit in which he claimed CNN libeled him by reporting he was digging up dirt on Joe Biden and Ukraine.
U.S. District Court Judge Laura Taylor Swain in Manhattan dismissed the suit against CNN on a technical ground: She found California law applied to the case and Nunes had failed to request a retraction as required under the laws of the Golden State. Nunes’ lawyer had argued that the laws of Virginia or Washington, D.C., should apply, but the judge said it made the most sense to apply the laws of Nunes’ home state to the dispute, Politico reported.
In 2019, Nunes also sued Twitter over two parody accounts that he claimed harassed him, @DevinNunesMom and @DevinCow. That lawsuit brought on merciless ribbing from late night show hosts and other comedians. The Late Show host Stephen Colbert mocked the Republican congressman explaining how Nunes’ lawyers arrived at the $250 million amount for the lawsuit: “You take the value of Devin Nunes’ reputation and you add $250 million dollars.”
This week the Washington Post reported that the publicly traded company that plans to merge with Trump’s social media company is under investigation by two federal regulators, which have asked for stock trading information and communications.
Digital World Acquisition Corp. disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it had received “certain preliminary, fact-finding inquiries” from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority in late October and early November regarding stock trading tied to the merger agreement announced Oct. 20 the Post reported.
