$435M will buy farmer Nunes a lot of John Deeres.
As Carter Page found out recently, to file a civil lawsuit for slander or defamation you need to show “standing” before the court will even consider the case. “Standing” requires that you show you were injured by the statement, that the statement was the cause of your injury and not something else, and that the injury is something that is recoverable by financial or other property compensation.
I doubt Nunes, as a public figure, can show that he was economically injured or lost his Congressional seat because of the statement so I don’t think this will get heard in court.
The interesting part of this CNN smear is that it is part of a much wider pattern to attack Rudy Giuliani, Joe DeGenova, Victoria Toensing, Sean Hannity, John Solomon, and even President Trump by implying that there was something wrong in contacting and interviewing the fired prosecutor in the Burisma case. Shokin under oath has testified that he was told by Poroshenko that Biden was demanding his firing and that he needed to resign “for the good of their country”. Lindsey Graham is trying to get a visa for Shokin to tell his story to the Senate Judiciary Committee but this is being blocked by the same Ambassador William Taylor that implicated Trump in his testimony to the House committee. Small world, isn’t it.