Appeals court tosses Devin Nunes’ lawsuit against CNN

Former Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) suffered yet another humiliating legal loss on Monday as a federal appeals court tossed out a lawsuit he filed against CNN, according to POLITICO legal reporter Josh Gerstein.

The lawsuit, which was originally dismissed in March by a district court judge in Florida, argued that CNN and anchor Jake Tapper had defamed him when they discussed conspiracy theories about the hammer attack on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband. However, Judge Susan C. Bucklew ruled that Nunes could not bring the suit in Florida because CNN and Tapper have no connection to that state.

Nunes, who now serves as the CEO of former President Donald Trump's Truth Social platform, appealed that decision to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals — but according to Gerstein, his attorneys failed to respond to notices from the appellate court, leading to the appeal being tossed this week.

This marks the latest in a series of legal defeats for Nunes, who has filed a series of shaky lawsuits against reporters and critics.

In one of the most famous examples, Nunes was locked in an ill-fated legal battle with "Devin Nunes' Cow," a Twitter account that posted satirical commentary on him.

More recently, Nunes suffered another pair of losses in April. First, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his $250 million lawsuit against The Washington Post, for publishing an article that Nunes claimed falsely insinuated he lied to Trump about a briefing intelligence officials gave Congress about Russia's involvement in boosting Trump's election bid; the court ruled the article didn't actually say that, and that Nunes hadn't pointed to anything in it that was false. Then, a Trump-appointed district court judge tossed Nunes' lawsuit against Esquire for a 2018 article revealing his family uses undocumented labor at their dairy farm — ruling that the evidence showed the article was true.