Nunes denies he told Trump about House Intel briefing, threatens to sue WaPo

[Midnightwalk]

4. I think the real target is Times v Sullivan

I see a parallel to crazy abortion restricting legislation. The point is to get a case that the conservative supreme court can rule on

Here’s an article that worries me.

And if Locke had her way, it would be easier for Nunes to prevail in his defamation actions. In an October discussion organized by the Heritage Foundation, Locke argued that the Times v. Sullivan ruling had spread a mind-set of immunity in U.S. newsrooms: “For the media, after having been told by their lawyers for so long that basically anything goes, it’s not surprising that journalism today and its standards have seriously eroded and basically anything goes,” said Locke, a defamation attorney who represented the University of Virginia official who successfully sued Rolling Stone magazine, among other noteworthy cases.

In February of this year, however, Justice Clarence Thomas pitched a reconsideration of the actual-malice standard. The ruling in Times v. Sullivan, argued Thomas in a concurring opinion turning down an appeal of a defamation case, came out of history’s left field and didn’t originate in the thinking of the founders or early thought on the First Amendment. “We did not begin meddling in this area until 1964, nearly 175 years after the First Amendment was ratified.

[link;https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/12/05/did-devin-nunes-just-file-halfway-decent-defamation-suit|]