The rumor was shocking and spread quickly: Two family-values Republicans were having an affair -- with each other -- and they weren't sloppy state legislators or a pair of suave singles, but prominent and married household names.

It's been nearly a year since never-proven, scantily sourced allegations found remarkable traction in the mainstream press, appearing to help sink California Rep. Kevin McCarthy's bid to replace John Boehner as speaker of the House before helping capsize Rep. Renee Ellmers' re-election bid in a North Carolina primary.

Perhaps surprisingly, considering the humiliating headlines and their career-claiming tolls, no lawsuit has been filed against firestorm-sparking journalist Charles Johnson of Gotnews.com, who publicly offered few specifics and sourced his reporting to multiple anonymous sources.

The clock is ticking for legal action, as defamation cases must be filed within one year in the nation's capital, California and North Carolina -- the most logical jurisdictions as the Sept. 25 anniversary nears for Johnson's second and most widely shared report on the alleged affair.

Ellmers and McCarthy representatives did not respond to multiple requests for comment on whether the politicians intend to sue Johnson, and it's still possible they will choose to do so.

The lawmakers arguably have longer than a year to file a lawsuit, given a contentious theory that continuing to host content online resets defamation filing deadlines. They also could point to Johnson's more-recent boasts about tanking McCarthy and Ellmers.

But the cases would become more difficult if filed after Sept. 25, and Johnson says he's not concerned. In fact, he says the politicians' silence vindicates his claims.

"If I worked for a publication like U.S. News & World Report or the Washington Post and broke this story, I think I'd be in the running for various journalism awards," he says. "It was a little weird to have changed the composition of the U.S. Congress. We probably would be talking about House Speaker McCarthy now if not for my reporting."

Johnson adds: "I'm actually a little disappointed they didn't decide to sue me, because I thought it would be interesting to depose members of Congress. … They're totally not going to sue at all because they know I was correct."

Although his reports contained little information about his sources and their specific claims, Johnson says he spoke with his sources about the possibility of them stepping forward if legal action required it, and says they indicated they would.

Johnson's initial affair-alleging reports remain online despite an Oct. 7, 2015, cease and desist letter from Ellmers' attorney Thomas Farr, who demanded Johnson remove the "indisputably false" content from his website.

"These reports are causing great injury to Mrs. Ellmers and her family," Farr wrote in the letter, which Johnson published a day before McCarthy's stunning Oct. 8 decision to drop out of the speaker's race, which came after Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., wrote to colleagues asking that candidates with embarrassing misconduct in their past withdraw.

Jones said last year he was concerned that Johnson republished the story with impunity.

"I think that if someone implies something improper that is a lie, I would call my attorney. ... I would have called my attorney and said, 'Look, I want you to write this editor and tell him, no more. I'm not going to put up,'" Jones told Roll Call. "In fact, the guy reprinted the story a month ago, the same one [he] wrote a year ago. I don't understand that. I'm not saying that means you're guilty either. [But] I just would not let it linger."

Farr did not respond to three requests for comment on whether Ellmers intends to sue in light of his unheeded demand for a retraction. Johnson says he never heard from an attorney representing McCarthy, who remains House Majority Leader. McCarthy Chief of Staff James Min and Communications Director Mike Long did not respond to several emails requesting comment on whether McCarthy will sue.

McCarthy denied the allegations to colleagues, McClatchy reported, and told reporters Jones' letter did not prompt his withdrawal from the speaker contest, which he said actually was motivated by a newfound conviction that "a fresh face" was necessary.

Ellmers said in an October statement, published in an Associated Press article about the affair allegation, that she would be "praying for those who find it acceptable to bear false witness," but her Chief of Staff Al Lytton did not respond to emails requesting comment on whether she will sue.

It's unclear why the lawmakers have not sued Johnson, who sometimes is described as conservative but says he's an anti-war trade deal skeptic who voted for Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown of California.

Potential explanations for the legal inaction include fear that suing would breathe new life into a stale tale, or that Johnson and Gotnews.com would not be lucrative targets.

Cornell Law School professor Jeffrey Rachlinski says public figures often threaten to sue but rarely follow through, as "lawsuits are expensive and time-consuming and suits by public figures for defamation must meet a high standard and are thus rarely successful."

"Suing for defamation is always dicey, even if you know you're in the right; the lawsuit itself just further amplifies the original accusations," adds UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh.

"And of course you have to pay your attorney fees, and the defendant's if you're in a state with an anti-[strategic lawsuit against public participation] statute that provides for fee-shifting (California does) and the defendant wins the anti-SLAPP motion (quite possible if the matter looks like it involves an honest mistake)," Volokh says in an email.

If Ellmers or McCarthy decide to sue after the one-year deadlines pass, it's possible for them to point to a more recent utterance or article by Johnson, but then "the lawsuit would be limited to damage done by the more recent publication," Rachlinski says.

Volokh says states that have considered applying the "single publication rule" to defamation posted online are "nearly unanimous" in adopting that longstanding rule for print publications, meaning the filing deadline probably would not be reset merely by continued hosting of the material on a website.

The lawmakers likely would find little success trying to evade filing deadlines by seeking to sue in a different state, an approach called forum shopping, Rachlinski says, as states have laws laying out what happens when separate state laws conflict.

"These rules will generally direct the courts to apply the law--including the rules on statutes of limitations-- where the tort occurred," he says. "For defamation, the law of the target of defamation generally applies, regardless of where the suit is brought."

Johnson himself has familiarity looking to sue somewhere he doesn't live, filing a defamation lawsuit against Gawker Media in Missouri, which a judge dismissed in January for lack of personal jurisdiction, finding the parties had insufficient connection to the state. He refiled the same lawsuit, which remains pending, in California, just under the one-year deadline there.

"Only a few places would have jurisdiction over the internet publisher defendant," Volokh says. "The place the defendant lives and works does; the place the plaintiff lives might; but other places probably don't."

Johnson, who lives in California, has made a name for himself with bold reports self-published without traditional editorial restraint. His scoops include what he says was the name of a former University of Virginia student who told an alarming but ultimately discredited story to Rolling Stone about being gang-raped at a fraternity, and he says he's brought in about a half million dollars in website donations this year.

But the controversial journalist, called reckless by detractors, says he sees himself as having more scruples than Gawker, which was sued into bankruptcy earlier this year when a jury awarded wrestler Hulk Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, $140 million after finding Gawker violated his privacy when it published a sex tape of Bollea with a friend's wife.

Johnson says his own lawsuit against Gawker was independent of a long-secret multicase assault orchestrated by billionaire Peter Thiel, who paid Hogan's legal bills and sought to destroy Gawker, objecting to its "thinly sourced, nasty articles that attacked and mocked people" after the publication revealed Thiel's sexual orientation in 2007.

Though he flouts traditional media sensibilities, Johnson says he sticks to some industry norms like giving targets an opportunity to respond and making corrections or clarifications as needed. He says he's never been sued for his Gotnews.com reports and has no interest in filing his own defamation lawsuits against lawmakers who said he wasn't telling the truth -- something that may be possible.

While Johnson feels the sex lives of politicians are fair game -- whether he objects personally to their conduct or not -- he says he disagreed with publication of the Hogan sex tape and Gawker's outing last year of a heterosexually married business executive, related to a former cabinet secretary, who reportedly hired a gay escort.

Johnson isn't necessary out of the woods. There's still time for a last-minute defamation lawsuit and he says he's not sure how he would fight a hypothetical invasion of privacy lawsuit from the lawmakers -- Rachlinski notes California's broad intrusion law has a two-year filing deadline, though Volokh points out actual affairs among politicians would be considered newsworthy -- or a flotilla of lawsuits from a well-funded anonymous adversary.