Rep. Devin Nunes leveled a personal attack against the journalists who published what he says is a false story reporting he spent time meeting Ukrainian officials in Europe attempting to dig up political dirt on Joe Biden.
“These evil slime balls say that I was Vienna meeting with Ukrainians,” Nunes said Thursday on the Mark Levin show. “Not only was I not in Vienna, I actually have pictures of myself in Benghazi, Libya … in Malta with the remains of an Army Air Corps soldier from World War II that we were loading into a plane.”
Last week, CNN published a report depicting how Nunes, the leading Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, met with an ex-Ukrainian official to get dirt on Biden, citing the attorney of an indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani as a source.
Giuliani is said to have orchestrated a campaign of shadow diplomacy in the country in an attempt to uncover damaging information on the Bidens.
Earlier this week, Nunes filed a $435 million defamation lawsuit against the network in federal court for linking him to those dealings.
[Related: Scalise: Schiff ‘spying’ on Nunes with call records]
“I said at the time, this is demonstrably false and scandalous fake news,” Nunes said. “Ten days passed, and we built the case (for a defamation suit).”
“At no time during his visits to Libya or Malta did [Nunes] or his staff ever meet any Ukrainians or have any discussions with anyone about the Bidens,” the suit says, the Washington Examiner reported.
“Which, by the way, if I was in Vienna meeting with Ukrainians, that would be OK,” Nunes said. “I was doing all the things the chairman of the Intelligence Committee is supposed to do.”
During public impeachment hearings, Nunes has been one of President Trump’s most vocal defenders.
Trump’s relations with Ukraine are at the center of the impeachment investigation, which Nunes and other Republicans have said CNN and other mainstream news organizations have propped up out of a bias against Trump.
