Vulgar emails to Rep. Devin Nunes’ wife triggered criminal investigation, documents show
The criminal case against a Southern California man accused of harassing Rep. Devin Nunes’ wife centers on two vulgar emails she received a year ago at her work email address, according to law enforcement records obtained by McClatchy.
William Burden, 58, faces a misdemeanor count of contacting Elizabeth Nunes “with intent to annoy” with “obscene language” or “threat to inflict injury,” in the Tulare County case. Burden faces up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.
A May 28 Tulare County Sheriff’s Department report shows officers investigated the two vulgar emails she received and three ominous phone calls to her workplace at a Tulare County school.
The two emails were sent from an account associated with Burden on Jan. 20, 2020, according to the report. One, sent around 3 a.m., referred to a sex act and included a subject line that read “Christian (expletive).”
The other, sent around 5:30 a.m. on the same day, also referenced a sex act.
Burden denies he sent the emails, said his attorney, Maggie Melo.
Investigators also reviewed three March 2020 phone calls to Nunes’ school, according to the report. The first was a mostly unintelligible voicemail. In the second, someone reached another school employee and insulted the Nunes family.
The third was a voicemail with menacing language, an obscenity directed to Elizabeth Nunes and a call for large protests at the school. Investigators said the voice on the recording sounded similar to the first of the three calls to the school.
The phone calls went to the school through an internet phone service called Bandwidth. Sheriff’s investigators obtained a warrant to see if the company had records suggesting Burden had used the service. Bandwidth told investigators that it had no record of Burden’s phone numbers in its system.
Capitol Police called
Melo, the defense attorney, said the phone calls no longer are a part of the case against Burden.
David Alavezos, assistant district attorney in Tulare County, said there were “two sides to every story” but declined to comment about any facts of the case, citing an office policy to not discuss case details in the press.
The Tulare County Sheriff’s Office and the U.S. Capitol Police, who were also reportedly involved in the case, did not respond to requests for comment.
Rep. Nunes, R-Tulare, in the past has alleged that left-leaning activists have targeted his family. In 2019, he sued an activist organization that publicly cited Elizabeth Nunes’ workplace emails in an ethics complaint against Rep. Nunes. The group alleged Elizabeth Nunes’ emails showed the congressman wasn’t fully disclosing certain financial interests he had in a winery.
Nunes alleged in the complaint the public records request that disclosed his wife’s emails resulted in harassment of teachers and increased security at the school. Nunes is no longer suing the organization.
McClatchy in 2019 requested records from the school that showed any additional security measures or threats, but school administrators said they had no records responsive to the request, suggesting the district did not spend public funds on extra security.
Will a jury find the messages ‘obscene’?
The standard for “obscene” is difficult to identify, according to analysis by the Shouse California Law Group. It could mean dealing with sexual content, but California courts have ruled that language doesn’t have to be sexual for the statute to apply.
Melo argues the emails are not obscene, threatening or harassing, though she denies Burden sent them. Moreover, she argued it was inappropriate for Nunes to get police involved.
“So instead of deleting these emails, they called the D.C. police and the local sheriff, and thousands of dollars were spent investigating these two emails,” Melo said.
Additionally, Burden’s defense argues that the California court doesn’t have jurisdiction in this criminal case because he was in international waters when the emails were sent. Melo provided a cruise itinerary that shows Burden was out of the country on a two-month long cruise trip when the emails were sent on Jan. 20.
Tim Ward, the district attorney, has opposed that motion, calling her argument “ludicrous.”
“This court does not lose jurisdiction over crimes committed in this County, by another California resident, simply because he committed his internet crime while on vacation,” Ward wrote in a response to Melo’s motion to dismiss.
The Tulare County Superior Court scheduled a hearing on the dismissal motion for late February.
This story was originally published February 3, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Vulgar emails to Rep. Devin Nunes’ wife triggered criminal investigation, documents show."
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