Devin Nunes’ Attorney Admits ‘Dead End’ in Hunt for Real Identities of Cow, Mom Twitter Account Parodying the Congresssman

Photo credit: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds, AFP via Getty Images.

Congressman Devin Nunes (R-CA) hunt for the true identity behind the anonymous parody Twitter account “Devin Nunes’ Cow” has not turned out to be well done.

According to the Fresno Bee, the Congressman’s attorney has admitted that he has hit a “dead end” in the legal battle to have Twitter release the real names of the people behind the cow parody account as well as another calling itself “Devin Nunes’ Mom.” Nunes sued the two pseudonymous accounts as well as GOP strategist Liz Mair last year in a defamation lawsuit, targeting their relentless mockery of him online.

In court. Twitter rejected the attempts to reveal the names. “The San Francisco-based company argues it is protected from lawsuits like Nunes’ under a federal law that says social media companies like Twitter are not liable for what people post on their platforms if they don’t have a hand in creating the content,” the Bee reported. The social media giant was referring to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which carves out legal protections for online platforms from being held responsible for their users exercising their First Amendment rights.

Nunes’ attorney, Steven Biss, instead argued that by exercising their right to free speech, the Devin Nunes’ Cow and Devin Nunes’ Mom parody accounts were violating the Congressman’s free speech.

“They’re doing more than allowing Liz Mair, the cow and the mom to post a tweet,” Biss said, per the Bee. “They’re censoring, they’re promoting an anti-Nunes agenda, they’re banning conservative accounts and they’re knowingly encouraging it.”

“Just because you don’t like it and asked to have them take it down,” Judge John Marshall noted to Biss, “doesn’t mean they’re liable if they don’t take it down.”