Judge tosses George Santos' copyright suit over Jimmy Kimmel prank videos

MANHATTAN (CN) ­­— A federal judge on Monday dismissed a civil suit filed by expelled Representative George Santos, finding that late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s prank videos of the disgraced former congressman fall under fair use and are protected against copyright infringement claims.

The loss for Santos was made public hours before his expected guilty plea to criminal fraud charges in federal court on Long Island.

After losing his congressional seat in December, Santos became a popular figure on Cameo, a platform that lets users pay for personalized videos from celebrities, reportedly raking in at least $400,000 from the side hustle.

Kimmel used the platform to request outlandish videos featuring the ex-rep — creating fake profiles and falsely representing them to be fans seeking custom-made clips — then featured the clips on his late-night show, ridiculing the embattled New York Republican in a recurring segment titled “Will Santos Say It?”

In one clip, Santos congratulated the farcical winner of a Florida “beef-eating contest,” who Kimmel claimed “ate almost six pounds of loose ground beef in under 30 minutes.” Santos called the feat “amazing and impressive.” In another video, Santos celebrated the purported cloning of a Cameo user’s mother’s dog, a schnauzer named Adolf.

In his civil complaint in the Southern District of New York, Santos claimed that airing the clips on national TV violated his copyright.

U.S. District Judge Denise Cote, a Clinton appointee, found that Kimmel’s method of obtaining the scripted videos from Santos may have been deceptive, but the videos nonetheless were protected by the fair use doctrine as sufficiently transformative.

“In short, a reasonable observer would understand that Jimmy Kimmel Live!  showed the videos to comment on the willingness of Santos — a public figure who had recently been expelled from Congress for allegedly fraudulent activity including enriching himself through a fraudulent contribution scheme — to say absurd things for money,” she wrote in her 27-page opinion.

“Thus, the videos were used for political commentary and criticism, purposes that do not supersede the ‘objects’ of the original Videos,” she wrote, citing recent Supreme Court precedent on fair use in Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts Inc. v. Lynne Goldsmith .

Santos’ attorney Andrew Mancilla, from the Manhattan firm Mancilla & Fantone LLP, told Courthouse News the dismissal was “disappointing” and promised to appeal the ruling.

“We believe the district court’s fair use finding undermines the purpose of copyright law and we hope that the appellate courts agree,” he said Monday afternoon.

Santos filed suit in February against the Hollywood-based “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” host, ABC television network and its parent company Walt Disney Co.

Represented by Davis Wright Tremaine, Disney and ABC argued in their motion to dismiss that Kimmel’s personalized Cameo videos of the former congressman were meant to mock and criticize a public figure. That protected use illustrated Santos’ “apparent willingness to say patently ridiculous things for money," Nathan Siegel, an attorney for the firm Davis Wright Tremaine, told Cote at an initial conference in April.

Santos’ attorneys also argued that Kimmel’s use of the Cameo videos in a national broadcast fell outside of the two types of licenses offered by the app: a personal use license or a business license. Cote, refuting Santos’ argument that he had sole discretion to set prices for each type of license, said the contract claims were preempted by the Copyright Act.

Santos was expelled from Congress in December after a House Ethics Committee report concluded he “sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit.”

At the time Santos had pleaded not guilty to a superseding indictment accusing him of inflating his campaign’s fundraising numbers and charging campaign contributors’ credit cards without their consent, but he began negotiating a deal with prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York shortly after losing his seat.

The vote to remove Santos, who was elected in 2022 to represent New York’s 3rd Congressional District, cleared the House on a 311-114 vote. More than 100 Republicans voted in favor of expelling their colleague, breaking with members of GOP leadership, including House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.

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