Former Congressman George Santos filed a lawsuit against late-night host Jimmy Kimmel on Saturday.
Santos is suing Kimmel for fraud, breach of contract, unjust enrichment and copyright infringement over his use of ‘Cameo’ videos in his program.
‘Cameo’ is a website where you can hire celebrities to make personalized videos for yourself or to gift your friends.
“Birthdays, milestones, or even a well-deserved roast, the perfect celebrity is only a search away,” Cameo’s website states. “Find yours and request them.”
Instead of using the service to have a celebrity sing his friend “Happy Birthday,” Kimmel allegedly requested at least 14 videos from Santos to use on his show.
Kimmel used the clips in a segment called “Will Santos Say It?” in which he made light of trying to get the former politician to say foolish things.
The New York Post reports:
Santos claims Kimmel duped him into producing over a dozen personalized videos through the video platform, which he then featured on his late-night talk show, according to a complaint filed Saturday in Manhattan federal court.
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.
In addition to allegedly violating Cameo’s terms of service and Santos’ copyright, the suit claims Kimmel committed fraud by using fake aliases to solicit videos “for the sole purpose of capitalizing on and ridiculing [Santos’] gregarious personality” — and even bragged on his show about his duplicity.
Kimmel “played on the comedic irony of possibly getting sued by [Santos] for fraud, claiming [on his show] that it would be a ‘dream come true,’” the suit notes.
“Jimmy, sorry that my Christmas gift to you came late, but here’s to making wishes come true,” Santos told The Post. “I hope you enjoy reading your lawsuit for fraud that you’ve been looking forward to.”
Santos is seeking a minimum of $750,000 in damages.
Disney and ABC are also named in the lawsuit.
