Former Rep. George Santos, whose fabrication of a fraudulent identity not only created one of the biggest scandals to have hit Congress, but also got him expelled as a Representative, has filed a civil lawsuit against Jimmy Kimmel on Saturday, accusing the comedian and late-night television host of using fake names to request Cameo videos from him and then misusing them on his show.
In an ironic twist, Santos sued Kimmel for copyright infringement, fraud, breach of contract, and unjust enrichment. He is seeking at least $750,000 in damages.
The disgraced politician said in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that Kimmel submitted at least 14 requests for clips on the site Cameo, where celebrities sell short personalized video messages.
Kimmel provided “phony names and narratives,” the lawsuit says, and sent “fake requests … from fake user profiles created by Kimmel as part of the fraud.” The lawsuit was first reported by the New York Post.
The lawsuit further claims that Kimmel “chose the personal use licenses for all the Cameo videos with the intention to violate such licenses by broadcasting and commercially exploiting the Cameo videos on national television.”
Cameo, which launched in 2017, has become the go-to media outlet for pop culture’s most notorious personalities to sell videos of themselves to fans. Frequently, videos purchased from some of the internet’s most contentious characters are posted to and go viral on social media platforms like TikTok and X. George Santos offered to “say whatever you like” in videos that he then sold for as much as$400 a pop.
Notorious for bilking donors and voters alike, Santos seized the opportunity to commercialize his expulsion from the Halls of Congress and immediately attracted Cameo customers when he appeared on the app.
“Haters are gonna hate,” Santos said in the viral video that quickly circulated online after it was sold to a Cameo user. “And if you have haters, that means you’re doing something right, girl!”
After he started offering the personalized messages at $75 per video on Monday, Santos rapidly raised prices as demand skyrocketed. By the weekend, each video — most ranging from 30 seconds to a minute long — cost $500.
The lawsuit says that Kimmel began using the videos on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” in December, telling his audience that Santos had “a new gig making videos on Cameo for $400 a pop” and that Kimmel could not resist sending him “ridiculous requests.” Some of the videos were played during a segment titled “Will Santos Say It?”
During a Dec. 11 episode of the show, Kimmel joked about possibly getting sued by Santos, according to the lawsuit.
“Could you imagine if I get sued by George Santos for a fraud? I mean how good would that be? It would be like a dream come true,” Kimmel said, according to the suit. “So since I started buying his videos his rates went way up to $500 a piece. He should be thanking me for buying these videos.”
Kimmel then played two more of the videos, the suit says.
A lawyer for Santos sent Kimmel a cease-and-desist letter on Dec. 12 and demanded that the videos be removed from YouTube and TikTok accounts associated with the show.
Representatives for Kimmel did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday. NBC News also reached out to ABC and Disney, both named as defendants, for comment.
