Former Rep. George Santos may have gotten ousted from the US government, but he’s still causing drama on late night talk shows.
On Tuesday’s episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Kimmel, 56, slammed the disgraced former congressman, 35, for his “preposterous” lawsuit.
“Did anyone else get sued by George Santos this weekend? I am currently embroiled in what may be the most preposterous lawsuit of all time,” Kimmel said. “This is so good. This is like getting sued for paternity by Nick Cannon,” he joked, referring to the actor’s 12 children with six different women.
According to a complaint filed Saturday in Manhattan federal court, Santos claims Kimmel duped him into producing over a dozen personalized videos through the video platform Cameo, which Kimmel then featured on his ABC talk show.
Santos was expelled from the House of Representatives Dec. 1, a little more than a year after he won the election, despite fabricating much of his personal and professional history, lying about his campaign’s finances and defrauding donors.
Among other things, Santos lied about attending prep school, attending Baruch College and NYU, working at Goldman Sachs, his mother dying in the 9/11 terror attacks, employing victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting, founding a pet rescue charity and getting mugged.
Following his ouster, Santos began shilling his image on Cameo, where celebrities can sell personalized videos. There, he unknowingly made at least 14 clips for pseudonymous requests from Kimmel for $500 a pop, according to the complaint.
In addition to allegedly violating Cameo’s terms of service and Santos’ copyright, the suit claims Kimmel committed fraud by using aliases to solicit videos “for the sole purpose of capitalizing on and ridiculing [Santos’] gregarious personality” — and even bragged on his show about his duplicity.
Santos is seeking at least $750,000 in damages. ABC and Disney are also named in the complaint.
“Jimmy, sorry that my Christmas gift to you came late, but here’s to making wishes come true,” Santos told The Post. “I hope you enjoy reading your lawsuit for fraud that you’ve been looking forward to.”
Kimmel further explained on his show, “George has rudely filed a lawsuit against me, our show, and the Walt Disney company, because we did a nice thing. Because we supported him by ordering his Cameo videos!”
Kimmel described how, “After he was removed from the House, George signed on with Cameo to make some money. You know, the website where you can get a celebrity to make a video? So we wrote some absolutely ridiculous messages for him to read. We gave them a credit card number, and sure enough, he recorded the messages and sent them back to us. And now, he’s suing. He says we deceived him, under the guise of fandom, soliciting personalized videos, only to then broadcast them on national television.And if there’s one thing George Santos will not stand for, it’s using a fake name under false pretenses!”
Kimmel, who is hosting the upcoming Oscars, and who also hinted at ending his show, gleefully said in December, “Can you imagine if I get sued by George Santos for fraud? How good would that be? It would be like a dream come true.”
But, on Tuesday’s show, after that “dream” did come true, he sounded more incredulous.
“The idea that he believed these messages were from real fans…one of them was about a guy named Gary who ate six pounds of ground beef in under 30 minutes. Another one was a message congratulating my mom Brenda on the successful cloning of her beloved schnauzer, Adolph,” Kimmel said, referring to the Cameo videos.
“He says he thought these were real messages and that he was duped. He’s being represented by the prestigious law firm of Pot, Kettle and Black.”
The Post reached out to Kimmel for comment.
