George Santos Brings Jimmy Kimmel Case to Appellate Court

George Santos is still gunning for Jimmy Kimmel, but it seems the Second Circuit isn’t quite buying his argument.

Santos’ team appeared in front of a panel of appellate judges yesterday, making their case for why a lawsuit they filed against the Jimmy Kimmel Live! host last year shouldn’t have been thrown out.

The lawsuit stems from a stunt Kimmel pulled on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in 2023. Following his expulsion from Congress, Santos had made himself available for paid video messages on Cameo. Kimmel took the opportunity to launch a recurring segment, titled “Will Santos Say It?”, in which he paid the disgraced former congressman $500 per video to deliver outlandish messages.

Santos alleged that Kimmel’s on-air use of the videos violated his copyright, and broke Cameo’s terms of service. Santos also argued that Kimmel committed fraud when he used aliases to commission the videos “for the sole purpose of capitalizing on and ridiculing” Santos.

Kimmel responded to that lawsuit on air, dubbing it “maybe the most preposterous lawsuit of all time.”

Kimmel, ABC, and Disney filed a joint motion to dismiss the lawsuit last April. In August, a judge agreed to toss the case out, ruling that Kimmel used the videos for political commentary—a “transformative” purpose—and that his actions were thereby protected under the “fair use” doctrine. 

Several months later, Santos appealed the judge’s decision. Yesterday, his team made their case for that appeal to a panel of appellate judges—and they tried a new argument on for size. Santos’ team appeared to reverse course on their original complaint, a report from Courthouse News details. This time around, they argued that Santos originally intended the videos to be satirical. Thus, they claimed, Kimmel airing the videos in a satirical manner was not “transformative” enough from Santos’ original purpose.

But the idea that Santos intended for his videos to be a joke was met with skepticism from the panel. “It’s a separate argument from the argument you started out with,” said U.S. Circuit Judge Raymond Lohier. (Santos’ initial argument last year had claimed that he intended the Cameo videos to “generate an inspiring message.”)

Nathan Siegel, the copyright attorney representing Kimmel and Disney’s side, concurred with the panel, noting the new argument from Santos’ team “contradicts everything that they have argued up to this point.”

U.S. Circuit Judge Richard Sullivan expressed a similar sentiment, noting that Santos’ original complaint never argued that the congressman intended to be “satirical” or “self-deprecating.”

“We should fault the district court for not doing that when you didn’t do it?” he asked Santos’ team.

While these comments don’t sound promising for Santos, the hearing did not result in an immediate ruling from the three-judge panel.