The school district that employs Rep. Devin Nunes’ wife has no records that show public employees feared harassment after Democratic activists filed a public records request seeking her emails, according to documents obtained by McClatchy.
The records contradict claims Nunes, R-Tulare, made in two lawsuits in which he said a progressive group had requested his wife’s work emails from her school and “doxxed” her and her coworkers by publishing their emails and personal information online.
Nunes in the lawsuits said that resulted in harassment of the teachers and increased security at the school, as well as thousands of dollars in expenses.
The school says it has no records of teachers reporting harassment or increased security measures, although it spent more than $17,000 in legal fees responding to the document request. The district refused to provide more information on how it spent the money, citing attorney-client privilege.
Devin Nunes is married to Elizabeth Nunes, who is an elementary school teacher in the Sundale Union Elementary School District.
Michael Seeley, a Los Angeles member of the political group Southern California Americans for Democratic Action, filed a public records request in early 2018 seeking all emails to and from her school district email dating back to 2013, with exceptions for emails that concerned individual students.
The group Campaign for Accountability then cited emails from that public records request in a complaint filed against Devin Nunes in July 2018, alleging he had not properly disclosed his financial interests as required of members of Congress.
The email at issue was sent to Elizabeth Nunes about paperwork and funds to become a partner in the wine company Phase 2 Cellars. The public link cited in the complaint does not include any teacher emails or names besides Elizabeth Nunes’.
Nunes first complained about the public records request in a lawsuit in which he attempted to sue a retired Tulare County farmer and several Democratic activists who in 2018 contested Nunes’ description of himself as a farmer on ballots. Nunes, who grew up in a dairy family, won the challenge and was allowed to describe himself as a congressman and farmer.
He dropped that lawsuit this month. In the complaint, he accused Campaign for Accountability and Seeley of working together to request the emails, “targeting” his wife, doxxing teachers and “costing the Tulare County Office of Education thousands of dollars in unnecessary cost and expense.”
Doxxing is a kind of online harassment that involves publishing someone’s contact information, such as a phone number or email address.
Nunes filed another lawsuit in Virginia against political research firm Fusion GPS and Campaign for Accountability that included the same accusations.
“Seeley published Elizabeth Nunes’ emails online and included the names and email addresses of numerous school administrators and teachers, resulting in extensive harassment of these innocent, hard-working citizens of Tulare County, including hateful accusations that they teach bigotry and racism,” the still-active lawsuit states. “In fact, the school was so concerned about security problems resulting from this situation that it adopted enhanced security measures.”