The legal matter of Nunes v. proceeded through the courts. The action brought before a panel comprising Judges Guido Calabresi, William J. Nardini, and Eunice C. Lee centred on a defamation claim under New York law, grounded in remarks delivered by Rachel Maddow on her MSNBC programme — a network operating under NBCUniversal's ownership, with Cory Gnazzo serving in the executive producer role.
Andrii Derkach — identified by U.S. authorities as an operative working on behalf of Russia in connection with attempts to shape the 2020 presidential race — passed a collection of materials to Nunes in December 2019, at a time when Nunes held both a congressional seat and the ranking-member position on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Declassified findings from an Intelligence Committee Assessment made public on March 16, 2021 placed the Derkach Package at the centre of open debate that had been running for some time. Two days after that document's release, on March 18, 2021, Maddow addressed the Derkach Package matter on air, stating that Nunes had not turned the materials over to the FBI — something she characterised as the appropriate step when receiving items from a person designated by the U.S. government as a Russian agent. Nunes later contested that characterisation in court with evidence he presented as demonstrating its inaccuracy.
During a deposition, a former HPSCI staff member described how the package — directed to Nunes — came into the hands of committee personnel, was stored in a secure area, and was then handed off to the FBI approximately two days after it had arrived.
Four recipients were named in a previously published article as having been sent packets attributed to Derkach: Nunes, Senators Graham and Grassley, and Mulvaney, who held the White House Chief of Staff post at the time. Graham and Grassley stated they had not received the material, while Mulvaney and Nunes gave no response to multiple outreach attempts. A source with knowledge of the situation indicated that the materials were never handed over to the FBI, and the court observed that a reasonable reading of that account — placing Nunes in possession of the Derkach Package while no transfer to federal investigators took place — amounts to a conclusion that he chose not to provide it to them.
Attorneys for Maddow and Gnazzo pointed to their use of that previously published article as the basis for their work, arguing that drawing on existing reporting does not meet the threshold for a finding of actual malice. The judges found that Nunes had fallen short of the evidentiary threshold for actual malice — a legal standard requiring proof that Maddow either knew her statement was false or had strong reason to doubt its accuracy.
The ruling noted that strict factual precision is not a condition for protection to apply, with the court stating that shielding a free and unintimidated press from defamation liability extends to coverage where the reporter held a reasonable, good-faith belief that the account faithfully conveyed the underlying allegations — a principle the ruling connected to New York Times v. Sullivan.
Under the New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964) standard, a defendant who in good faith relies on a responsible source cannot be found to have acted with recklessness — the mental state actual malice demands. When the case reached summary judgment, Nunes presented no evidence from which a reasonable factfinder could draw the conclusion that Maddow or Gnazzo had any basis to question the reliability of the article they had published.
On the question of actual malice, the appellate panel sided with the lower court's conclusion that Nunes had not put forward sufficient evidence to overcome NBCUniversal's motion for summary judgment.
