Appeals court rejects George Santos lawsuit against Jimmy Kimmel over Cameo app videos

NEW YORK — A copyright infringement lawsuit former Congressman George Santos filed against talk show host Jimmy Kimmel and ABC was properly dismissed by a lower court judge, an appeals court said Monday.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan rejected the lawsuit in which Santos alleged that Kimmel deceived him into making videos on the Cameo app that were used to ridicule the disgraced New York Republican on air.

The appeals court said Kimmel was protected by fair use laws allowing limited use of copyrighted material without permission for humor and parody, among other possibilities.

Lawyers in the case did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The 2nd Circuit said Kimmel used fictitious names to submit requests to Santos for personalized videos that the comedian then aired on his show as part of a mocking series of segments titled “ Will Santos Say It? ”

In one clip, Santos offers congratulations to the purported winner of a beef-eating contest, calling the feat of consuming 6 pounds (2.7 kilograms) of loose ground beef in under 30 minutes “amazing and impressive.”

In his February 2024 lawsuit, Santos said Kimmel was “capitalizing on and ridiculing” his “gregarious personality.”

The appeals court, in an opinion written by Circuit Judge Raymond J. Lohier, Jr., said even the lawsuit filed by Santos portrays the defendants as being motivated by sarcastic criticism and commentary, two purposes protected by the fair use doctrine.

In July, Santos reported to a federal prison in New Jersey to begin serving a seven-year sentence after pleading guilty to federal wire fraud and aggravated identity theft charges for deceiving donors and stealing people’s identities in order to fund his congressional campaign.

Santos was once heralded in the Republican Party for winning a perennially contested New York congressional seat covering parts of Queens and Long Island. But then it became clear that he fabricated much of his life story.

Among false claims were that his mother died in the 9/11 attacks. He also had to explain that he was “Jew-ish,” not Jewish, when questions were raised about his claim that his grandparents had fled the Holocaust.

He survived two expulsion attempts before a scathing House ethics committee report in late 2023 led to his ouster from Congress, making him only the sixth member in the chamber’s history to be removed by colleagues.