Devin Nunes lives on a congressman’s salary. How is he funding so many lawsuits?

Rep. Devin Nunes’ critics have asked how he is paying for the six lawsuits he filed this year, but there are no public records showing how he has paid his Virginia lawyer.

That means Nunes is either paying for the lawsuits out of his own pocket, promising to pay his lawyer a portion of any money they’re awarded in court at a later date, or flouting House Ethics rules that would require him to publicly disclose who is funding the legal work.

Nunes, R-Tulare, has filed lawsuits against Twitter, anonymous social media users known as Devin Nunes’ Cow and Devin Nunes’ Mom, a Republican political strategist, media companies, journalists, progressive watchdog groups, a political research firm that worked for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and a retired farmer in Nunes’ own district.

All but one of those lawsuits — the one filed in California by Nunes’ campaign against retired farmer Paul Buxman, who accused Nunes of being a fake farmer — is still active. Nunes filed most of the cases in Virginia.

The only lawsuit with a public record indicating payment is the one against Buxman, which Nunes withdrew within weeks of filing it.

Defamation lawsuits aren’t cheap. Virginia defamation attorney Lee Berlik, who is unaffiliated with any of Nunes’ suits, said each of Nunes’ lawsuits could cost “well into six figures” and even millions of dollars.

“For legitimate defamation cases involving actual damages of $1 million or more, plaintiffs will typically incur at least six figures in legal fees,” Berlik said. Each of Nunes’ five active lawsuits seeks hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.

Nunes’ main reported income, according to his latest financial disclosure covering 2018, is his congressional salary, which is $174,000 per year. His wife is an elementary school teacher in California, and her salary is his only other reported income besides a low interest payment on a savings account. He is also the father to three daughters.

So paying for five lawsuits all worth six figures or more in legal fees seems unlikely, unless he came into a huge source of income in 2019 that has not yet been reported.

Berlik said using contingency fees to fund defamation suits would be “the exception, not the rule,” since most lawyers don’t want to front costly legal fees for the possibility of a win.

So who is paying for Nunes's lawsuits anyway?

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