Former Rep. George Santo isn’t laughing about pranks late-night show host Jimmy Kimmel has pulled on him. Kimmel acknowledged the possibility of legal action by Santos as part of his pranking, saying it would be a ‘dream come true.’
Santos is making Kimmel’s dream come true. He is suing Kimmel, Disney, and ABC over a series of pranks Kimmel has pulled on Santos to humiliate Santos and use as material for his television show.
Santos was kicked to the curb by the House in December, a little over a year after he was elected. He was surrounded by charges of fraud, among others, and a House Ethics Committee report found that Santos spent campaign funds on things like Hermes, Botox, and OnlyFans.
Once he was out of office, he began offering himself up on the Cameo app, where celebrities are paid to do personalized videos. Kimmel paid $500 per video, at least 14 times. Kimmel made pseudonymous requests, providing scripts asking Santos to offer congratulations or whatever to the recipient. Kimmel was the recipient.
Among Kimmel’s scripts for Santos were videos congratulating a woman for successfully cloning her schnauzer named Adolf, as well as a man for winning a competitive ground beef eating contest, court papers noted.
Santos filed a lawsuit on Saturday that claims Kimmel deceived him into making the videos to ridicule him on his late-night show. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The lawsuit includes ABC and Disney, besides Kimmel. Disney is the parent company of ABC.
Kimmel turned his pranks into a segment on his show.
Starting in December the videos were played on a segment, “ Will Santos Say It? ” the suit says.
In one of the clips, Santos offers congratulations to the purported winner of a beef-eating contest, calling the feat of consuming 6 pounds (2.7 kilograms) of loose ground beef in under 30 minutes “amazing and impressive.”
“Frankly, Kimmel’s fake requests were funny, but what he did was clear violation of copyright law,” Robert Fantone, an attorney for Santos, said in an email.
Santos is seeking at least $750,000 in damages for the five videos that were aired on Kimmel’s show. He also asks for other damages to be determined at trial.
It’s more than a little ironic that Santos is suing over fraud, given his history in politics.
“At the heart of this dispute lies the deliberate deception and wrongful appropriation of the Plaintiff’s digital content by the Defendants, orchestrated through the platform Cameo.com, where celebrities and public figures are meant to connect with their fans through personalized video messages,” declares Santos’ jury seeking complaint filed Saturday in federal court in the Empire State.
“Defendants openly admitted to deceiving the Plaintiff under the guise of fandom, soliciting personalized videos only to then broadcast these on national television and across social media channels for commercial gain—actions that starkly violate the original agreement and constitute clear copyright infringement.”
JUST IN: Expelled Rep. George Santos is suing left-wing ‘comedian’ Jimmy Kimmel for misusing his Cameo clips.
The complaint was filed in Manhattan federal court.
After getting booted from the House, Santos took to Cameo to make personalized videos.
Kimmel allegedly purchased… pic.twitter.com/Frvup5JtYY
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 17, 2024
Santos said he is standing up for himself in filing the lawsuit.
If you don’t stand up for yourself you will always lose! That’s what I’m doing with this lawsuit. I’m standing my ground and fighting to uphold my legal rights. Jimmy boy thought he could use fraudulent means to violate my copyrights and now he’s going to face the consequences.…
— George Santos (@MrSantosNY) February 18, 2024
I think Santos is a garbage human as a politician. He’s a fraudster. He’s out of office, though, and Kimmel is cashing in on Santos’ gullibility. Or, even if he knew he was being played, he did it anyway and collected the check. Either way, Kimmel opened himself up to legal action.
Kimmel is a garbage person, too, if you ask me. He and the other late-night hosts killed late-night shows for at least half of the country. They don’t offer up comedy anymore, it’s all about politics and the DNC talking points. It’s not entertaining unless the viewer is a partisan Democrat.
His show is popular. Fortunately for the other half of America, Fox News Channel launched Greg Gutfeld’s early late-night show. It airs in the late primetime slot and is immensely popular. Jon Stewart’s return to The Daily Show didn’t surpass Gutfeld in ratings. People want to be entertained after a long day. There is a market for comedy in late-night television and Fox is filling that void.