Chris Cuomo Pushes Back on Devin Nunes’ CNN Lawsuit: How Does He Explain Parnas Calls?
CNN’s Chris Cuomo pushed back on Republican Congressman Devin Nunes’ defamation lawsuit, which attacks the network for using indicted businessman Lev Parnas as a source: “How does Mr. Nunes explain this: four separate calls with Parnas with his name of them?”
In his “Facts First” segment, Cuomo invoked the massive lawsuit just filed earlier on Tuesday by Nunes, one of several in which he is the plaintiff. In the legal filing, Nunes claims CNN is the “mother of fake news” and published a “demonstrably false hit piece” about him that relies on the “fraudster” and “hustler” Parnas. The lawsuit specifically referenced this November 22nd CNN story, which cited Parnas’ attorney, Joseph A. Bondy, saying that Parnas was willing to testify under oath to Congress that Nunes met with former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin in Vienna, Austria in 2018 to gather political dirt on Joe Biden. (CNN has now published a report on Nunes disputing this claim.)
Cuomo, however, zeroed in on the hypocrisy of Nunes’ claims, based on the latest impeachment inquiry bombshell, which revealed Nunes himself had been in contact with the now-indicted Parnas four separate times in the spring of 2019, according to subpoenaed call logs.
“In the $435 million suit that Mr. Nunes filed against CNN today, he attacks us on anything that could come from [Rudy] Giuliani associate Lev Parnas. He calls him a fraud and a hustler,” Cuomo noted. “If it’s not okay to get information from Parnas, how does Mr. Nunes explain this: four separate phone calls with Parnas with his name on them? Why didn’t he mention them when he kept arguing there was nothing to any of this talk about Parnas and Giuliani’s efforts? Well, I guess the answer may be in the question”
The CNN host then pointed out the curious chronology of the four calls, which came on April 10th and April 12th, in the Trump-Ukraine timeline.
“The timing is key,” he said. The four calls happened at the “same time Trump mouthpiece and Fox employee John Solomon starts publishing stories hyping the Russian-backed fiction: Ukraine actually messed with the 2016 election, not Russia. Solomon was working the phones with Giuliani. Giuliani was in touch with Nunes and Parnas, as well as the folks in the White House and the OMB. Mick Mulvaney still runs it, he’s the acting Chief of Staff. They’re in control of when the aid goes.”
For his part, Nunes conceded “it’s possible” that he talked with Parnas during a Tuesday night appearance on Fox News’ Hannity. However, he also tried to dismiss any idea of a relationship between himself and the criminally accused Parnas by claiming “it seems very unlikely I’d be taking calls from random people.” The Republican Congressman did not address the fact that the call logs also show Nunes initiated the calls to Parnas on two occasions.
Watch the video above, via CNN.
