Kimmel Joked He’d Get Sued by Santos — Then It Actually Happened

Jimmy Kimmel joked on air about the possibility of George Santos suing him for fraud, calling it “a dream come true.” Two months later, Santos actually did it. Two federal courts later told Santos no, on the same legal grounds each time.

Former Congressman George Santos sued Jimmy Kimmel, ABC, and Disney in February 2024, alleging the late-night host deceived him into making personalized Cameo videos under fake identities, then broadcast them on national television to mock him. A federal district judge dismissed every claim in May 2024, and the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that dismissal on September 15, 2025, finding Kimmel’s use of the videos protected by fair use as political commentary and parody.

George Santos v. Jimmy Kimmel Lawsuit Timeline and Updates

December 2023 — Santos Joins Cameo After Being Expelled From Congress

George Santos was expelled from the House of Representatives in early December 2023 following a damning ethics report and mounting federal criminal charges. Shortly afterward, he joined Cameo, the platform where public figures sell short, personalized video messages directly to fans, charging $350 per video under his own account.

December 2023 — Kimmel Begins Ordering Videos Under Fake Names

This is the core factual setup of the entire dispute. Jimmy Kimmel submitted at least 14 separate requests for personalized Cameo videos from Santos, using fictitious names and fabricated narratives rather than his own identity. Santos, unaware he was filming content for a national television audience, recorded responses to absurd scenarios Kimmel had invented.

In one resulting clip, Santos enthusiastically congratulates a purported winner of a beef-eating contest, calling the feat of consuming six pounds of ground beef in under 30 minutes “amazing and impressive.” Kimmel began airing these clips on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” as part of a recurring segment titled “Will Santos Say It?”

December 11, 2023 — Kimmel Jokes About the Lawsuit That Hadn’t Happened Yet

During a broadcast airing more of the Cameo clips, Kimmel addressed the obvious legal risk directly to his audience, according to Santos’ later complaint: “Could you imagine if I get sued by George Santos for a fraud? I mean how good would that be? It would be like a dream come true.”

That on-air remark would later become part of the public record in the very lawsuit it joked about, an unusual detail that gave the entire dispute an almost theatrical quality from the outset.

February 17, 2024 — Santos Files Suit

Santos filed his civil complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, naming Kimmel, ABC, and Disney as defendants. The lawsuit advanced four distinct legal theories: copyright infringement, fraudulent inducement, breach of contract, and unjust enrichment.

This is the core allegation across all four claims: Santos argued Kimmel “misrepresented himself and his motives to induce Plaintiff to create personalized videos for the sole purpose of capitalizing on and ridiculing Plaintiff’s gregarious personality.” The complaint specifically alleged Kimmel had selected Cameo’s “personal use” licensing tier when ordering the videos, then deliberately violated those license terms by broadcasting and commercially exploiting the clips on national television, a violation Santos argued constituted copyright infringement on top of the underlying deception.

Santos sought at least $750,000 in total damages, including $150,000 for each of the alleged copyright violations across his 14 videos, the statutory maximum available for willful infringement under federal copyright law.

May 2024 — District Judge Denise Cote Dismisses Every Claim

U.S. District Judge Denise Cote, an appointee of former President Clinton, dismissed all four of Santos’ claims in a 27-page ruling. The timing carried its own irony: the dismissal landed the same day Santos was separately scheduled to appear before a different judge in his ongoing federal criminal case, just hours before he pleaded guilty to wire fraud and identity theft charges.

Judge Cote’s central finding addressed the copyright claim directly: Kimmel’s airing of the videos was “transformative enough” to qualify for fair use protection, the legal doctrine permitting limited use of copyrighted material without the creator’s permission under specific circumstances. She found the videos were “used for political commentary and criticism,” not simply rebroadcast for entertainment value alone.

Cote’s reasoning on what fair use actually meant in this context was direct: “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 dismissed the remaining fraud, contract, and unjust enrichment claims on separate grounds, rejecting each of Santos’ arguments for why the case should proceed further.

Santos Appeals to the 2nd Circuit

Santos appealed the dismissal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Manhattan, continuing to press his core argument that Kimmel had engaged in deliberate deception specifically designed to harvest content for commercial broadcast under false pretenses, conduct Santos argued fell outside any reasonable fair use protection regardless of his own public figure status.

September 15, 2025 — The 2nd Circuit Affirms the Dismissal

The appeals court rejected Santos’ appeal in full. Writing for the panel, Circuit Judge Raymond J. Lohier Jr. found the lower court had properly dismissed every claim, with the fair use analysis again proving decisive to the outcome.

Here is where it gets complicated for Santos’ legal theory, even accepting his version of events as true. The appellate panel found that Santos’ own complaint, in describing exactly how and why Kimmel had requested and used the videos, effectively conceded the very elements that establish a fair use defense. The court wrote that even Santos’ lawsuit “portrays the defendants as being motivated by sarcastic criticism and commentary,” two purposes the fair use doctrine specifically protects.

What Fair Use Actually Required the Courts to Decide

This is the core legal mechanism that decided the case at every stage: fair use isn’t a single test, but a balancing analysis built around four statutory factors, including the purpose and character of the use, and the effect of that use on the market for the original work.

Both courts focused heavily on the first factor, purpose and character, finding that Kimmel’s broadcast served a transformative purpose entirely distinct from Cameo’s intended use of personalized fan greetings. Santos had created the videos believing they were private, personal messages for an apparent fan. Kimmel’s actual purpose, both courts found, was using those same recordings as raw material for public commentary on Santos’ willingness to say outlandish things for money, a purpose courts have long recognized as protected parody and criticism, particularly when directed at a public figure.

Why Santos’ Public Figure Status Mattered

The courts’ repeated emphasis on Santos being “a public figure who had recently been expelled from Congress” wasn’t incidental detail. Fair use analysis, particularly for parody and commentary, generally extends more protection when the underlying subject is a public figure whose conduct is a legitimate subject of public interest and criticism, compared to a private individual with no independent public profile.

Santos’ own well-documented history, the ethics report that led to his expulsion, the subsequent federal fraud charges, and his eventual guilty plea, became part of the legal context both courts used to evaluate whether Kimmel’s mockery served a legitimate critical or commentary function. The pattern is familiar in fair use litigation involving public figures: the more clearly established someone’s public misconduct, the more latitude courts tend to extend to commentary, satire, and parody built around that conduct.

The Licensing Argument That Never Gained Traction

Santos’ complaint leaned heavily on a specific technical argument: that Kimmel had selected Cameo’s “personal use” license tier, rather than a commercial or business license, when ordering the videos, and that broadcasting them nationally therefore violated the platform’s own terms of service regardless of any fair use defense.

That argument never gained real traction with either court. Fair use operates as a defense built into federal copyright law itself, generally capable of overriding a platform’s private contractual terms of service when the underlying use genuinely qualifies as transformative commentary. A platform’s licensing categories, designed primarily to differentiate pricing tiers for different commercial purposes, don’t independently determine whether a particular use ultimately satisfies the federal fair use test.

A Separate, Unrelated Legal Flashpoint Involving Kimmel and ABC

Apart from the resolved Santos litigation, Kimmel and his network have faced a separate, unconnected controversy worth distinguishing clearly. In September 2025, ABC suspended “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” for nearly a week following comments Kimmel made about reactions to the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr publicly threatened action against the network.

When ABC reinstated Kimmel’s show on September 23, 2025, President Trump posted on Truth Social threatening to sue ABC, calling Kimmel “another arm of the DNC” and referencing the network’s prior $16 million settlement with him over a different matter, inaccurate on-air comments by anchor George Stephanopoulos regarding the E. Jean Carroll civil verdict. As of this writing, no such lawsuit over the Kimmel suspension and reinstatement has actually been filed. Trump’s comments remain a public threat, not a filed legal action, an important distinction from the fully litigated and resolved Santos case covered here.

What This Lawsuit Teaches Public Figures and Content Creators

Most people signing up for a platform like Cameo never read the fine print closely enough to understand that a “personal use” license doesn’t necessarily protect them from being broadcast nationally if a court later finds that broadcast qualifies as transformative commentary. Santos’ case is the clearest available demonstration of how thin that protection actually is, particularly for someone whose own public conduct already invites legitimate criticism and parody.

The deeper lesson extends beyond celebrity Cameo pranks specifically. Fair use law has consistently protected satire and commentary built around a public figure’s own documented words and actions, even when that figure was genuinely deceived about how their content would ultimately be used. Two separate federal courts, applying the same legal standard independently, reached identical conclusions here, a level of consistency that signals this outcome reflects settled doctrine rather than a single judge’s idiosyncratic reading of the law.

For anyone creating personalized content through platforms like Cameo, the practical takeaway is straightforward: a license agreement with a platform governs your relationship with that platform. It does not automatically govern, or override, how federal fair use law treats the resulting content once it becomes the subject of legitimate public commentary, particularly when the person depicted has a well-documented history of public misconduct inviting exactly that kind of scrutiny.

Readers tracking how courts apply fair use protections to commentary and parody involving public figures should also follow the Kat Von D lawsuit, which tested nearly identical fair use principles in a completely different creative context, and the Alex Jones lawsuit, which shows how courts draw a sharp line between protected commentary and defamation when public statements cross from opinion into demonstrably false factual claims.

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