A federal appeals court in Manhattan on Monday upheld the dismissal of a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by former U.S. Rep. George Santos against late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.
The former GOP congressman and convicted fraudster filed a lawsuit against Kimmel, ABC, and its parent company, The Walt Disney Company, in February 2024, alleging the host of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” tricked him into creating videos on the celebrity video platform Cameo, which were later featured on the show in late 2023.
The segment included several “ridiculous requests” from fictitious people sent to Santos. Kimmel played the videos on air and asked his audience, “Will Santos Say It?”
In one of the videos featured on Cameo — a platform that allows users to pay celebrities for personalized content — Santos congratulated a woman named Brenda for “successfully cloning her beloved schnauzer, Adolf.”
@jimmykimmellive
Jimmy pranks #GeorgeSantos with crazy #Cameo requests…
♬ original sound – Jimmy Kimmel Live
In another, the once-high-profile Republican offered congratulations to a man named Gary Fortuna for consuming six pounds of loose ground beef in under 30 minutes, “an all-time record, which is amazing and impressive.”
Santos said Kimmel was “capitalizing on and ridiculing” his “gregarious personality,” but U.S. District Judge Denise Cote dismissed the lawsuit in August 2024, ruling that the use of the videos was protected under the fair use doctrine as commentary and criticism.
The videos were featured on the show to “comment on the willingness of Santos … to say absurd things for money,” and were thus protected by fair use and not subject to a copyright claim, she ruled.
In a 3-0 decision Monday, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan agreed with the lower court ruling, affirming that Kimmel’s use of the videos was fair use.