Megan Thee Stallion dismisses 'diss tracks' about her as testimony in defamation trial continues
The trial attorneys don’t conform with standard evidentiary rules and procedures, which has created a free-wheeling approach to testimony and evidence.
MIAMI — Rapper Megan Thee Stallion testified Monday that she’s unbothered by songs written about her by her former friend Kelsey Harris, rapper Nicki Minaj and her ex-boyfriend Pardison Fontaine, dismissing an attorney’s suggestion that she has reasons to be upset beyond his client.
Minaj’s “Big Foot” track, Megan testified, “was just so silly in the beginning. I couldn’t get through it.”
“I just feel like it wasn’t something I wanted to keep listening to,” Megan testified.
“So you have the ability to turn things off that you don’t want to listen to?” asked Jeremy McLymont, an attorney for online commentator Milagro Cooper.
“As it pertains to Nicki Minaj, yes,” Megan answered.
Megan also said Drake’s line in his song “Circo Loco,” “This bitch lie ‘bout gettin shots, but she still a stallion” isn’t clearly about her.
“If he is talking about me, he’s using it in a very indirect way,” she said.
Megan said Drake’s line may reference a woman getting injections to enlarge her buttocks “but she’s still a stallion, meaning she’s still curvy.”
“If he was talking about me he could’ve been more direct, because I don’t have butt shots,” Megan said.
McLymont referenced Drake’s mutual Canadian heritage with rapper Tory Lanez, who’s in prison for shooting Megan, and said “they have some sort of Canadian allegiance between the two.”
“The fact that Drake mentioned you in the song that says ‘Free Tory,’ that doesn’t affect you at all?” he asked.
“I don’t know if this is meaning that he’s mentioning me just because he says stallion. A lot of people say stallion in their songs,” Megan answered.
Megan said she didn’t listen to Kelsey’s song all the way through “because that was a mess.”
“I don’t care about what Kelsey rapping about,” Megan testified. “Because why do I care about Kelsey rapping while we worried about Tory shooting me?”
Megan said of Fontaine’s song about her, “The breakup was definitely emotional for both of us, so I don’t think it made me feel good.”
But, she said, “I had a lot on my plate already, and Pardisan’s diss track just wasn’t at the top of my list.”
Megan’s testimony about the “diss tracks” highlighted the sixth day of testimony in a federal defamation trial featuring attorneys who don’t conform with standard evidentiary rules and procedures, which has created a free-wheeling approach to testimony and evidence that includes no objections for narrative answers and hardly any for obvious hearsay.
They don’t conform with procedures for using documents, and that combined with no objections for hearsay has witnesses reading aloud entire documents they’ve never before seen. Witnesses also watch segments of videos they may or may not be familiar with, then answer questions about them. And there’s no end in sight because U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga is one of those judges who doesn’t believe it’s her job to make objections for attorneys.
“I don’t object on hearsay, counsel objects on hearsay,” she said Monday.
Milagro testified for about five hours on Monday, about 80 minutes in direct and the rest in cross-examination. She spoke about her upbringing uninterrupted several times, including one answer that was 2 1/2 minutes. Her longest answer was about 4 1/2 minutes.
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Megan finishes cross-exam
McLymont’s first question to Megan on Monday was if she had any evidence that Milagro is a mouthpiece for Lanez.
Megan said Milagro has received money from Lanez’s father “and then she gets online and talks about things that nobody but Tory or his lawyers would know.”
Megan read aloud a text she sent her therapist in October 2022.
“I just saw the guy who shot me online in the club, dancing with another female rapper and everyone congratulating him on his album, and being an amazing person. Nobody cares when people do bad things or they just simply don’t care about me or believe me, and I’m so tired.”
“So at this point in time, you’re concerned with Mr. Lanez is dancing in the club with other female rappers?” McLymont asked.
“It’s not that I’m concerned with him dancing in the club with other female rappers,” Megan said, it’s that Lanez and Kelsey appeared to be “just living their lives, like nothing happened.”
“Like I’ve been shot and I’m getting so much criticism, and I have turned into the villain, and they’re just happy,” Megan testified. “I was feeling like, why can’t I be happy? Like, why is everybody else moving on?”
Her therapist replied, “That’s the depression talking.”
Megan wrote back, “I don’t think anyone around me sees how sad I am.”
She teared up on the witness stand as she read more texts.
“I’m in tears, and everyone pretends not to see, or they genuinely don’t see. I’m not sure I’m tired of being ignored, but I also don’t know why I care what other people do to me.”
“What if they are ignoring me because they’re tired of me crying?”Megan wrote.
Megan testified that she may have been “talking about an ex-boyfriend here or something, I’m not sure, but I think at the time, I just felt like I was always so sad.”
“I was thinking I was maybe bothering everybody around me, just being sad all the time,” she said.
Megan later told McLymont he is “trying to make it be like I have so much hatred towards Tory Lanez, as if it’s for no reason.”
“It’s not just about Tory Lanez shooting me. It’s about what Milagro has been doing for him after the fact,” Megan testified.
She said she believes Milagro “is a bad person.”
“Because why would you even want to align yourself with somebody who would shoot a woman or shoot anybody?” Megan testified.
McLymont asked if Megan is suing only Milagro because “she doesn’t have millions of dollars like these other individuals.”
“Am I suing her because she don’t have no money? No, that’s not it,” Megan answered.
Megan added, “And I never said I wasn’t suing anybody else.”
“Have you sued anybody else?” McLymont asked.
“Not yet,” Megan answered.
McLymont also asked Megan, “Did you or your team make this video?”
“This porno video of me?” Megan answered.
“Yes,” McLymont said.
“No,” Megan answered.
Megan’s lawyers didn’t ask her any questions in re-direct.
Milagro testifies again
Milagro testified she went to live with her grandparents when she was about five years old because her mother was “being in music videos and partying and being on the scene, and she got caught up in that.”
“Little girls are not safe when the mother is high and she doesn’t know what’s going on,” Milagro testified.
Her mother was studying journalism when she went to prison, which Milagro said inspired her “to honor her in a way.” She said her father “went into pro football” and when her mother told him she was a pregnant, “he was more interested in sports, so he disregarded her.”
She said her childhood was “75 percent happy” with memories of friends and family enjoying a pool table and jukebox. But her grandmother also was “very strict” and embraced “tough love.”
“You didn’t get told ‘I love you’ every day. You didn’t get hugs. My grandmother felt like love was action, so you had a roof over your head and you had food, that was enough,” Milagro testified.
Milagro said her grandmother would curse at her to clean the house and get out of bed.
“She’d pull me out … ‘Get your ass up. … You stupid?” Milagro said. She remembers a neighbor giving her $1 when she was a kid, and “she whipped me and she said, ‘You don’t ever take no money from no man like that. Go take it back.’”
She later testified her show is “influenced by all of the people that I grew up with, seeing and interacting with or watching the communications between adults.”
She began reviewing TV shows in YouTube and formed a limited liability company in Texas in May 2020, then moved into celebrity gossip and eventually secured a contract with Stationhead that paid her $6,300 monthly to stream at least five hours a day, five days a week. She said she spent about $10,000 on equipment, including a $3,000 modem.
“Did you get your Stationhead contract with your relationship with Tory Lanez?” Nathacha Bien-Aime asked.
“No,” Milagro answered.
“Did you get your Stationhead contract for your relationship with his father, Sonstar Peterson?” Bien-Aime asked.
“No,” Milagro answered.
Bien-Aime mentioned the $3,000 Milagro received from Lanez’s father. Milagro said it was for her children’s birthdays and for winter coats, and payment for promotions for other projects.
“I cannot be bought for any price, let alone a measly $3,000,” Milagro testified.
“Tory asked me for money when he went to jail and I actually sent him money to help him out,” she said.
Bien-Aime questioned Milagro about her shows and the topics she covers, emphasizing that she discusses issues outside of Megan and Lanez. Jurors saw a clip of Milagro live streaming a police press conference about arrests in the murder of Jacksonville rapper Charles “Julio Foolio” Jones Jr.
A news broadcaster named the gunmen and discussed the alleged gang war. Jurors heard Milagro say, “I am so happy that this is happening. I’m so happy that it’s happening because I hope that there’s a young adult somewhere that decides that their life is not worth being thrown away.”
“I hope that they see this shit and be like, ‘You know what? Bitch, this shit is not worth it. I would rather go to school,” she said in the recording.
Milagro testified she’s “agitated” by the “the lack of content that is of substance.”
“I don’t like how everything is so sexual, hyper sexual, and I feel like the kids deserve better,” she said on the witness stand.
Milagro said she reads “the legacy media websites” for news, reads court documents and blogs and talks to sources for her information.
Milagro read aloud a message from a fan who said she’s tired of people acting as though Milagro is “a hater or like you’re against women.”
“Never once did you say that Tory wasn’t wrong. You said that Megan is lying. Two things can be true at the same time,” Milagro read aloud without a hearsay objection. (Maybe there’d be an exception for effect on the listener, but I don’t think so.)
She said her coverage of Lanez’s case increased because of the huge interest from her followers.
“There was an influx of hundreds of messages from multiple platforms wanting me to discuss it, and if something happened, they wanted an update,” she said.
Milagro also dismissed her former friend and moderator Amiel Holland-Briggs’ suggestion that her fanbase is a “cult.”
“That’s a disservice to all of the people from different walks of life who listen to my show. There are engineers, doctors, lawyers, stay-at-home moms,” she testified.
She said entertainers often have a “persona” that’s “a much more exaggerated version.”
Megan’s lawyers didn’t object when Bien-Aime questioned Milagro about a lawsuit against Megan by her former photographer Emilo Garcia, so jurors heard Milagro’s recap of those allegations, including about her “performing a sexual act in front of him” and berating him over his eating habits. (All the hearsay they don’t bat an eye over is really remarkable, but them not objecting to “can you tell me about that lawsuit?” might take the cake.)
Milagro also testified about other people who have accused Megan of lying, including Minaj, DJ Akademiks, Joe Budden and Drake — “I don’t know a bigger artist than him.”
“Were a lot of these people not even part of your audience?” Bien-Aime asked.
“I wish Drake watched my show. He does not. Nicki Minaj I do not believe is sitting up watching my show,” Milagro answered.
Regarding the digitally altered video Milagro promoted of Megan, Bien-Aime pushed the defense that Milagro thought it was authentic by asking if she had “any reason at that moment to believe that it was not Ms. Pete?”
Milagro said no, and Bien-Aime played a recording of Milagro speculating on her live stream that the video may be fake. Bien-Aime asked what she meant by “this has got to be A.I.”
“I’m saying to my audience, basically, that this has better be something else. You know?” Milagro testified.
“Did you believe that that was Ms. Pete in the video?” Bien-Aime asked.
“I did,” Milagro answered.
Milagro said Megan “has literally stripped down in music videos and gotten low and shown her behind and kind of arched her back” in a sexual position.
“It looked a lot like those videos to me,” she testified.
Megan’s lawyers have highlighted the fact that Milagro was initially represented by a legal services agency connected to Lanez, so Bien-Aime tried to counter that by asking her falling out with the group’s founder, Ceaser McDowell.
This was when Milagro clocked her longest uninterrupted answer at about 4 1/2 minutes. She said she raised $18,000 online for a lawyer. She gave McDowell $11,000, and he gave $7,000 to a lawyer in Florida. The lawyer called Milagro asking “where’s the rest?” Milagro tried to contact McDowell and he never responded, but the lawyer in Florida said “I got the rest.”
“At that point, he’s pocketing my money, in my mind. So I tell the Florida lawyer, look, from now on, I’m going to pay you directly, and that’ll clear up anything,” Milagro testified.
The lawyer, Michael A. Pancier in Pembroke Pines, Florida, told her he didn’t want to work with Ceaser and “I do not feel like I’m going to get paid on time.”
Milagro fundraised another $40,000 online and paid Los Angeles attorney Ronda Dixon $5,000 and “she consistently needed more money, because it was always a barrage of requests.” Dixon left the case shortly before trial and has not been in court.
Milagro became emotional as she testified about getting fired from Stationhead and having nothing in her bank account.
“I have an account right now that’s negative $10,000 where I had to worry about how to feed my kids, because I’m trying to pay all of this stuff. They just keep on, keep on, keep on,” Milagro testified.
Megan’s lawyers didn’t object for relevance as Milagro testified about when her current lawyers joined her case.
Megan’s lawyer John O’Sullivan of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP, is continuing his cross-examination of Milagro today. Closing arguments are expected this afternoon.
The claims are defamation per se, intentional infliction of emotional distress and promotion of a digitally altered sexual depiction of Megan in violation of a new Florida law.
Is Milagro a media defendant?
The trial has turned into a mini-trial about whether Milagro is a media defendant under Florida law after Milagro’s lawyers told Judge Altonaga the landscape has changed since her pre-trial ruling that Milagro is not.
Altonaga apparently didn’t get much of a coherent argument from Megan’s lawyers to counter Milagro’s lawyers’ argument.
If the judge decides Milagro is a media defendant, the defamation claim will be dismissed because Megan’s Quinn Emanuel lawyers didn’t formally notify Milagro of the allegedly defamatory material and request a retraction.
Attorneys will brief the issue after trial.
“The factual body that this decision has to be made against hasn’t been pulled together,” the judge said.
Gag order violation
Milagro’s lawyers asked Judge Altonaga to hold Megan in contempt of court for comments she made outside court last week, in violation of a court order prohibiting public comments about the case.
They requested a jury instruction and to question Megan about this in cross. McLymont tried to ask Megan about her out-of-court comments on Friday, but Judge Altonaga stopped him, then referenced his comment when telling the jury not to read or watch anything about the case.
Altonaga said Tuesday the motion is “out of line, quite frankly” because court rules give Megan’s lawyers 14 days to reply and by then “the trial will be over.”
McLymont said the timing was “not something we can control.”
O’Sullivan said McLymont didn’t talk to them about this before he filed the motion, which violates court rules.
“I’ll be denying the motion. You all confer and talk to each other. That’s required by the rules, and it’s sanctionable if you don’t do it,” Judge Altonaga told McLymont.
The attorneys filed another motion after talking to Megan’s lawyers, and Judge Altonaga said she’d allow them to question Megan about the comments and the gag order in cross-exam. That should happen today. She won’t specially instruct the jury.
Previous articles:
Ceaser McDowell, Daniel Kinney, Lenore Walker
Opening statements and Milagro
Court documents:
Nov. 24 motion for sanctions
Nov. 23 reply
Nov. 22 Milagro’s media brief
Nov. 16 Megan’s media brief
Nov. 16 contempt order against Lanez
Nov. 13 Megan’s exhibit list
Nov. 13 Megan’s witness list
Oct. 30 judge rejects Lanez’s motion to quash
Oct. 9 sanctions order for deleted texts
Sept. 16 Aidin Ross’ motion to quash
Aug. 14 transcript of Milagro’s deposition
Aug. 1 order re: Lanez’s deposition
April 16 contempt motion for Lanez
April 16 transcript of Lanez’s deposition
Feb. 10 most recent complaint
Dec. 23, 2024 motion to dismiss
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