Devin Nunes, a Republican congressman from California, said on Monday that he is suing Twitter, a GOP operative, and unnamed defendants behind parody accounts on the social network, for defamation and other claims, after those accounts insulted him on the platform.

In an appearance on Fox News' Hannity, Nunes said he was suing Twitter in the first of many lawsuits he plans to file against technology companies for their alleged bias against conservatives. That appearance came after Fox News reported that the congressman had filed a $250 million lawsuit "in Virginia state court" on Monday and posted a document without a case number or any verification that it had been filed.

Nunes, who represents the 22nd District in California, said in the document posted by Fox News that Twitter played a willing party to abuse he faced from a number of parody accounts, including one using the Twitter handle @DevinNunesMom. He also alleged that Twitter shadowbanned his account @devinnunes — a process by which a social network can quietly curb the distribution or reach of a user’s content without outright banning them — when he tried to respond to that criticism.

“The shadow-banning was intentional,” Nunes’s document reads, noting that Twitter is “essential” for the meaningful participation in American democracy. “It was calculated to interfere with and influence the federal election and interfere with Nunes’s ongoing investigation as a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.”

Republicans have alleged that technology platforms including Google, Facebook, and Twitter have an unfair bias against conservative viewpoints, an argument that these companies have repeatedly denied and disputed. Last July, following a disputed report by Vice News that stirred up conservative sentiment and is cited in the Nunes complaint, Twitter said in a blog post that it does not shadow ban, which it defined as making a user’s content undiscoverable to everyone but that user. “And we certainly don’t shadow ban based on political viewpoints or ideology,” the company wrote.

BuzzFeed News spoke with a deputy clerk in Virginia's Henrico County Circuit court on Tuesday who said that Nunes' lawyer, Steven Biss, only filed the lawsuit on Tuesday morning, despite earlier reports. The deputy clerk said that there was no way to file lawsuits online or overnight, adding that the document was currently being processed by the court's system.

It's unclear how Fox News obtained Nunes' complaint, or why it stated that the suit had been filed on Monday. A Fox News spokesperson did not return a request for comment.

Neither Nunes’s attorney nor his press representative answered BuzzFeed News’ requests for comment. Twitter declined comment.



Liz Mair, a Republican communications strategist who has worked for a number of GOP lawmakers and who is also named a defendant in the suit, told BuzzFeed News in an email that she had not reviewed the documentation. Having been critical of Nunes in the past on Twitter, Mair claimed she had learned of the congressman’s plan to sue from another reporter — implying she had yet to be served with a suit — and declined further comment.