California Rep. Devin Nunes said he intends to sue the Washington Post over a report that said he informed President Trump about a classified briefing about Russian interference in the 2020 election.
Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, made the announcement during a Friday evening interview on Fox News’s The Story with Martha MacCallum, which was guest-hosted by Harris Faulkner.
“I don’t know what planet the Washington Post is on,” Nunes said. “But they’ll have an opportunity in federal court in the next couple weeks to explain who their sources are, because I’m going to have to take them to court because I didn’t go to the White House. I didn’t talk to President Trump, Harris. So, this is the same garbage.”
Last week, members of the House Intelligence Committee received a briefing from Shelby Pierson, an aide to former acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire, in which she said Russia was trying to interfere with the 2020 presidential election in order to help Trump secure a second term. As one source told the Washington Post, Nunes relayed to Trump what Pierson said in the classified briefing.
“They build a narrative, they plant a narrative, they write fake news stories about it of things that shouldn’t even be talked about, you know, this classified information,” Nunes said. “And then, they run these stories. Who the hell is leaking this?”
The Washington Post did not immediately return a request for comment.
Jack Langer, Nunes’s communications director, told the Washington Examiner: “The Washington Post has been a crucial instrument used by resistance leakers for three years to perpetuate the Russia collusion hoax. Now, they’ve published more false information about Rep. Nunes, so they’ll get a chance to make their case in federal court. Honestly, sometimes it seems like the Post’s anonymous sources are Republican plants feeding them false information in order to further discredit their reporting.”
There have been conflicting reports as to whether Trump was angry at outgoing Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire for allowing the briefing to take place and that it could’ve led to Maguire’s removal. The president announced on Wednesday that Richard Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany and a Trump ally, would replace Maguire as acting DNI.
Nunes has sued other news outlets for reports he claimed were false, including a $435 million defamation suit against CNN over a story that alleged the congressman met with a fired Ukrainian prosecutor in an effort to dig up dirt on Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.
