Citing the decisions made by the Albemarle County Circuit Court judges, Mair’s counsel qrites that, per a direct application of Virginia law, the tweet is not defamatory.
“For starters, it does not present an actionable statement of fact, but rather a protected expression of opinion or political hyperbole,” the brief reads, before citing a portion of separate defamation lawsuit. “Moreover, Mair was simply ‘repeating or re-stating, . . . through tweets or otherwise, what [the Yacht] newspaper article has written and said.’”
After all claims against McClatchy were dropped, Mair’s counsel argues that Nunes “sought to salvage this claim not by adding new allegations about Mair and McClatchy, but rather by alleging that yet another entity (Fusion) was also somehow part of the conspiracy.”
This, they argue, was based only on a portion of a book titled “Crime in Progress” which only “glancingly” mentions Mair in context to the Henrico Twitter lawsuit and alleges no connection between her and Fusion.
Mair’s counsel also points out that Nunes’ defamation claims against Mair were dismissed by a Henrico County Circuit Court judge earlier this year. Those allegations were also based on Mair tweeting about the same McClatchy publications at issue in this appeal and, her counsel argues, the Henrico judge’s dismissal is a conclusion that Nunes’s defamation allegations were deficient as a matter of law.
