George Santos Slaps Jimmy Kimmel & Disney With Irony-Free Fraud Suit Over Cameo Pranks & “Deliberate Deception”

deadline.com:

George Santos seems to have never met a camera or a misrepresentation he didn’t like, except when it comes to Jimmy Kimmel.

Lacking all sense of irony, the expelled GOP ex-Congressman from New York today has hit the late-night host, ABC and Disney with a fraud and copyright infringement lawsuit over Kimmel’s admitted punking and pranking of Santos via personalized celebrity messaging site Cameo. “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.” Specifically, Santos and his attorneys are claiming that Cameo’s fine print terms of service don’t allow users/clients to put the purchased video up on national TV.

The fraud claim is because “Defendant Kimmel misrepresented himself and his motives to induce Plaintiff to create personalized videos for the sole purpose of capitalizing on and ridiculing Plaintiff’s gregarious personality.” Considering Santos is clearly a public figure and considering his short-lived and scandal filled one year in Congress, that’s one way of looking at it.