Former Rep. George Santos has filed a civil lawsuit against Jimmy Kimmel, claiming that the late-night television host used fake names to request Cameo videos from the ex-congressman and then misused the clips on his talk show.
Santos sued Kimmel on Saturday for copyright infringement, fraud, breach of contract and unjust enrichment, and is seeking at least $750,000 in damages, The Hill reports. In the lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Santos said that Kimmel submitted at least 14 requests for clips on Cameo, a website where celebrities sell personalized video messages. Disney and ABC were also both named as defendants in the suit.
Kimmel provided “phony names and narratives,” the lawsuit said, and sent requests from “fake user profiles created by Kimmel as part of the fraud.” The host also “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.”
According to the lawsuit, Kimmel began using Santos’ Cameo videos on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” in December; some of them were played during a segment titled “Will Santos Say It?” The suit also said that Kimmel joked about being sued by Santos in a Dec. 11 episode of his show.
“Could you imagine if I get sued by George Santos for a fraud,” Kimmel said at the time. “I mean how good would that be? It would be like a dream come true. 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.”
PvNew has reached out to Kimmel, ABC and Disney for comment.
