Sued streamer says she'd 'bow down and apologize' if she believed Tory Lanez shot Megan Thee Stallion
Defendant Milagro Cooper finished testifying late Tuesday afternoon at the federal courthouse in Miami.
MIAMI — An online commentator accused of defaming rapper Megan Thee Stallion testified all day Tuesday about evidence in the criminal case against Tory Lanez.
Milagro Cooper answered questions from Megan’s lawyer John O’Sullivan for about four hours as O’Sullivan pressed her about her coverage of Lanez’s criminal trial and convictions for shooting Megan five years ago.
Milagro testified she had a three-way call with Lanez and his father but never heard about the shooting until she spoke with only Lanez’s father in February 2021. She said Peterson “was hesitant to say anything that would compromise his son. So he literally stopped before anything that got to the weapon.”
To apparently try to show Lanez had to have told Milagro about the shooting, O’Sullivan played a recording of Milagro emotionally saying that if Lanez lied to her, she’d want to fight him because he told her they’d be “vindicated.”
“You didn’t have any personal knowledge of what happened that night, right?” O’Sullivan asked, referring to the shooting.
Milagro said she wasn’t there, so she couldn’t “have personal knowledge.”
“So whatever you might bring to the table, it’s just stuff you found out somewhere else, right?” O’Sullivan asked.
“Right,” Milagro answered.
“OK. And the things you were bringing to the table were ways of thinking about what happened that night that might let Tory be not guilty, right?” O’Sullivan asked.
“No,” Milagro answered.
Milagro testified she is “always open to the understanding that anybody could be lying to me.”
“So on that phone call with him and his father, they said that they appreciated my content, and they said to me, ‘Just watch everything and you’ll see.’ But he didn’t give me details. He just said, ‘You’ll see,’” Milagro testified.
O’Sullivan ended his exam by asking Milagro what she would do “if you found out today conclusively” that the shooting happened how the jury found: “Tory did it.”
“Would you feel bad about anything you said?” O’Sullivan asked.
“I would feel terrible,” Milagro answered.
“But you’re positive he’s not guilty, so you feel OK defending that in even the most aggressive ways?” O’Sullivan asked.
“I’m not positive, but I have not believed” everything, and “it’s not about if she got hurt,” Milagro answered.
“I know she was hurt, and I hate that she was hurt. I truly do,” Milagro continued. But, “you have to understand from my point of view,” she said, and said her mother “went to jail my whole upbringing.”
“I come from a negative area where so many people go to jail. Not everyone is guilty,” she continued, her emotions rising. “So when a Black man was being accused of something and the details were shaky” she wanted to be certain of the facts.
“If a situation presented itself that made it clear 100 percent, all I could do is bow down and apologize,” Milagro testified.
O’Sullivan began his direct-exam on Monday and took about seven hours over two days. Milagro’s lawyer Jeremy McLymont cross-examined her on Tuesday afternoon for about 45 minutes.
McLymont asked Milagro about specific incidents in which she believes Megan lied, including saying she wasn’t drunk when Kelsey said they were intoxicated and denying she’d slept with Lanez, which Milagro said happened “multiple times.”
“And that caused a lot of uproar in the community, right?” McLymont asked.
“Yes, because she literally said, ‘Oh, I don’t know why he would say something like that.’” Milagro also testified about Megan telling police she stepped on glass when they asked if she’d been shot.
“And when you say that Ms. Pete did not tell certain truths, do you have evidence that she did not tell certain truths?”
“I feel like I do,” Milagro answered.
A jury of five men and four women is to decide whether Milagro is liable for three claims: defamation for saying Megan perjured herself in Lanez’s trial, intentional infliction of emotional distress for coordinating with Lanez and his father to harass her, and promotion of a digitally altered sexual depiction.
O’Sullivan’s Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP trial team is trying to get jurors to understand years of social media banter and relationships between people who are strangers to them. At least one already is struggling: U.S. District Judge Cecilia M. Altonaga told attorneys Tuesday morning that a juror asked for clarification about names and relationships mentioned in testimony.
The juror wrote the questions down at the judge’s direction: “I’m unsure about who Tony Lanez is. Daystar is Tony? Sostar is the dad? Kelsey is former friend of Mrs. Megan?”
Judge Altonaga reminded the attorneys about the questions later in the day while also recommending they give jurors transcripts of the audio recordings being played.
“I’m understanding maybe 80 percent of what I hear,” Judge Altonaga said. “And you have the jury’s question about trying to understand relationships and meaning. I’ll just remind you of that.”
The judge didn’t answer the juror’s questions, but McLymont began his cross by having Milagro identify Tory Lanez’s real name as Daystar Peterson, his father as Sonstar Peterson and Kelsey Harris as Megan’s friend who was with her the night she was shot.
More from Milagro’s direct-examination
Some of O’Sullivan’s exam was aimed at showing jurors Milagro’s connections to Lanez and his father. Milagro said Sonstar Peterson became a father figure to her, and they discussed topics other than his son’s case such as his interesting in cooking and podcasting.
Jurors saw a timeline that included Milagro texting Lanez in September 2020 that an exclusive would change her life, Milagro getting a Stationhead contact in May 2021, her visiting Lanez and his father in Miami in February 2022, and Milagro posting Lanez’s “Cap” music video that features him chopping up an apparent horse leg. They also saw a list of $3,000 in electronic transfers from Lanez’s father to Milagro between Oct. 28, 2020, and March 3, 2022, in six payments between $200 and $1,000.
O’Sullivan questioned Milagro about her tweet in February 2022 that falsely said Lanez’s DNA wasn’t found on the gun when the finding was actually inconclusive, meaning he couldn’t be included or excluded as a contributor to the DNA found on the gun he used to shoot Megan.
She and streamer DJ Akademiks posted about the DNA before it was discussed in court, but Milagro testified Tuesday she saw Akademiks’ post and shared her own version because it “corroborated things that multiple people had told me.”
O’Sullivan displayed Milagro’s handwritten notes from Lanez’s December 2022 trial in Los Angeles in which she wrote “tory inconclusive tory cannot be excluded/included” then he played a recording of Milagro’s live stream that began:
“Tory Lanez voluntarily submitted to a DNA test, and this DNA was not found on the weapon. This is a fact. Sue me if there’s not a form that black and white states this. I’ll wait. I’ll wait. If I’m lying, then challenge me bitch, then sue me. Then is that the thing? No, I’m not retracting a damn thing and I’m not doing nothing. So no face, no case. I spoke to my sources, they live on the moon….”
The recording was about four minutes long.
Milagro testified she doesn’t have “an exact name” of who told her about the DNA report.
“Multiple people came to me, and I have a personal relationship with all the different people,” she said.
“Can you give me the name of a single source you relied on?”
“No,” Milagro said.
O’Sullivan played 3-4 minute recording of Milagro talking about “the trauma Olympics.”
“I told y’all a long time ago what people value and what they see in Megan,” Milagro said. She said “hoes - and Imma say it just like that, you hoes” value Megan “because it makes you feel like the way that you live your life is OK.”
“All y’all walking around in la la land, not being accountable for the bullshit that y’all do, the lies that y’all tell, the shit y’all stir up,” Milagro said. “And then you look at her win an award and you say, Oh, I can do it, too. Rah. Great. And nobody has to address the problems.” She also said Megan wouldn’t be in her situation if she had someone to tell her “to put the bottle down.”
Milagro also said on the recording that “y’all are mad at Tory” and want him to “be the scapegoat for your bad decisions.” She compared it to “hoes” you get pregnant and claim they were raped. “Yeah, sure Jan,” Milagro said.
O’Sullivan said the recording was “just before this lawsuit was filed.”
“Why were you speaking with such vitriol against Megan in 2024?”
Milagro said her grandparents introduced her “Richard Pryor, Bernie Mac” and others, “so when it’s time for me to do a show … I feel like that’s when you step into that terrace.”
Milagro said she speaks about others in the same way because she “has the same passion, conviction.”
O’Sullivan also questioned Milagro about social media posts and recordings in which she questioned whether Megan is mentally incapacitated and needed a guardian. Milagro said the post was based on a friend of Megan’s telling her that she wasn’t sleeping with her manager, Travis Farris, because Farris is like a guardian to her.
O’Sullivan mentioned a “guardian angel” and asked if Milagro based her comments about Megan being mentally incapacitated on a single word.
“I felt that that was odd verbiage for someone of her age. … Typically for someone her age you don’t use the word ‘guardian,’” Milagro said.
O’Sullivan also questioned Milagro about Kelsey’s interview with prosecutors before Lanez’s trial, after he played a 15-minute excerpt in which she detailed Lanez assaulting her then shooting Megan.
Milagro testified at length about why she doesn’t believe Kelsey was truthful, including that Lanez told her in the SUV before the shooting that he’d been sleeping with Megan when Kelsey was interested in Lanez.
“A woman just found out that her best friend slept with her guy behind her back. To me, that is motive,” Milagro testified.
She also referenced police station photos that showed Megan with “a knot on her head” and Kelsey with “scratches” while Lanez “didn’t have any defensive wounds or anything wrong.”
“So I heard what she said, but it did not align with multiple accounts,” Milagro said of Kelsey’s pre-trial interview.
“You’re here today to tell us that she was wrong when she said, that’s what happened?” O’Sullivan asked.
“I’m here to tell you that there were multiple people who saw different things,” Milagro answered.
More from cross-exam
McLymont asked about the “some 20,000 messages deleted” that O’Sullivan questioned her about in direct-exam.
“Do those thousands of messages have anything to do with Daystar and Sonstar Peterson?” McLymont asked.
“No, it would be virtually possible, because we have never communicated to that extent,” Milagro answered.
Jurors will be instructed that Milagro “deleted thousands of texts and removed the WhatsApp” messaging service form her phone in violation of a legal notice, and that jurors “should assume and infer that Defendant intended to deprive Plaintiff of the evidence in the deleted messages, that at least some of the deleted messages related to the claims in this case and were about Plaintiff, and that these deleted messages were unfavorable to Defendant.”
McLymont referenced Peterson’s payments to Milagro by confirming them then asking, “You didn’t get offered $1 million?”
“No, I did not,” Milagro answered.
McLymont said the money “was not to pay you for your mouth, correct?”
“That’s correct. It was not,” Milagro answered.
Milagro said the money was for her birthday and for her two daughters’ birthdays “on one of one occasion, maybe two or three.”
Peterson also paid her for “promotional services” for his podcast and “I believe he had written a book on a separate occasion,” she testifeid.
McLymont asked Milagro about other online personalities who support Lanez such as DJ Akademiks, Joe Budden and Aiden Ross, to make the point that all have much larger followings than her but aren’t being sued. McLymont displayed a messages to Milagro’s hotline and asked her to read one aloud from “Nicole from Philly.”
“Is every source legitimate?” McLymont asked.
“No,” Milagro answered.
“Do you evaluate leads and tips that come in from different sources?” McLymont asked.
“Yes,” Milagro answered.
Milagro said she speaks about topics other than Megan, including politics, relationships, other celebrities and “my own personal life.”
McLymont also emphasized that Milagro never formally accused Megan of perjury.
“Does this tweet here say that Megan lied on the stand?” McLymont asked.
“No,” Milagro answered.
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McLymont asked if the tweet is about “a bigger, more general topic” of Megan and other witnesses “potentially lying or not having proper credibility.”
“Yes, that’s what I was talking about,” Milagro answered.
McLymont confirmed she watched “the entire trial” and “took two notebooks worth of notes” then said she has a right to “your own opinion as to what you saw throughout the course of that trial.”
Milagro said she agreed.
McLymont also emphasized that Megan had bullet fragments in her feet, not whole bullets. He referenced a Shade Room post that said the bullets in Megan’s feet matched Lanez’s gun.
“A bullet would be the complete bullet,” she said.
McLymont also brought up Lanez’s apologetic text to Megan and his apologetic call to Kelsey and emphasized he never specifically mentions a shooting when he apologizes.
After Milagro left the stand, Megan’s lawyers read some of Kelsey’s testimony from Lanez’s trial, in which she answered “yes” to confirm Lanez threatened to shoot her but said she couldn’t remember what she said.
The testimony included Kelsey dodging questions about her pre-trial interview with prosecutors and saying she made false statements in the interview. Kelsey also confirmed she texted Meg’s security “Help. Tory shot Meg. 911” and said she did so “because I was in a panic.”
“Now, the accusation that you shot Meg is false. Is that correct?”
“Yes,” Kelsey answered.
Megan is expected to testify on Wednesday. Psychologist Lenore Walker likely will testify after her. She was at the courthouse on Tuesday and watched Milagro’s testimony.
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