Megan Thee Stallion Sues Tory Lanez Supporter for Cyberstalking, Deepfake Porn
After years of threatening to take action against online personalities who have disparaged her after Tory Lanez shot her in 2020, Megan Thee Stallion, née Megan Pete, is suing one popular blogger for cyberstalking, spreading deepfake pornography of her, and intentionally causing her emotional distress. Pete is requesting a jury trial and hopes to recover compensatory, punitive, and statutory damages.
“It’s time to hold bloggers accountable for years of harassment, cyberbullying, and the publication of misinformation about my personal and professional life,” Megan Thee Stallion said in a statement shared with Rolling Stone on October 30. “I’ve endured countless attacks on my character based on false narratives from social media bloggers misrepresenting themselves as journalists. It’s unacceptable behavior and these individuals need to understand there will be repercussions for recklessly posting lies and defamatory falsehoods.”
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Milagro Gramz, née Milagro Cooper, has tens of thousands of followers on YouTube and X and maintains a presence on various other sites as well. Through them, the suit claims, she has “acted, and continues to act, on behalf of Daystar Peterson (also known as Tory Lanez) as an online rumor mill churning out falsehoods about Ms. Pete…for no other reason than to bully, harass and punish Ms. Pete for Mr. Peterson’s conviction.” Megan Thee Stallion’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, also issued Cooper a notice to preserve documents and information related to the case, including her social media posts, any communication with Lanez, his family, and even the blogger DJ Akademiks, who has also spread false claims about the shooting and its aftermath.
In Spiro’s notice to Cooper, he accuses the blogger of working directly for Peterson, writing, “Plaintiff is aware of your conspiratorial relationship with Mr. Peterson and knows you are a paid surrogate of Mr. Peterson.”
Gramz quickly responded to the suit on X, writing that she had “been informed that I’m being sued by Alex Spiro on behalf of his client Megan Thee Stallion” and promising, “Of course, we’ll chat about it.” The blogger continued to repost content about the suit throughout the morning it was filed. Unite the People – the non-profit law firm representing Tory Lanez as he appeals his shooting conviction – announced that it would represent Cooper in the suit per a statement shared with Rolling Stone on October 31. “Milagro Elizabeth Cooper has been served a lawsuit making a lot of false claims against her professional conduct in an attempt to stop her from reporting on the Daystar Peterson case,” they wrote. “Unite the People Inc. was founded and exists to fight on behalf of the disadvantaged, the small and the powerless against these Goliath organizations, corporations or celebrities that want to push around and bully the Davids of this world.”
According to the suit, Cooper repeatedly claimed that Peterson did not shoot Pete over the course of his trial for doing so, in which he was unanimously convicted by a jury. He is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence. Most recently, the suit alleges, Cooper circulated a false claim that the gun Peterson used to shoot Pete had been missing since the trial, prohibiting Lanez from receiving a fair one.
“Didn’t I tell y’all [that] the gun was never presented in court and [that] ain’t make no damn sense? They gave the serial number and breezed past it. [Like], first off whose is it?? Origin point please,” she posted on X with an image of a legal petition Peterson’s appeal lawyer filed last week. Arguing for the vacating of his conviction, the filing claimed the gun was no longer available for DNA testing. Pete’s suit sharply contests that claim. “The firearm remains in the custody of the Los Angeles Police Department,” it says. “It is standard procedure in California criminal cases to show an image of the firearm in question rather than present the firearm in court. Defendant Cooper could have easily verified this information but chose to ignore it and instead promulgated lies about the integrity of the Trial and related investigation.”
Unite the People tagged Gramz’s Instagram profile in their posts on the petition last week. In response to Rolling Stone’s request for comment on the petition and the suit against Cooper, the organization said, “We, like most people in the US, are tired of these corporate backed celebrities attempting to intimidate and silence the little people. Journalist [sic]/Social media influencers have the right to first amendment freedom of speech and should not be scared into silence if these powerful figures don’t like what they say.” They referred us to their press release once more.
In her summer 2022 Rolling Stone cover story, Megan Thee Stallion issued a thinly veiled threat against bloggers that spread inaccuracies about her and the shooting. “I think it’s so crazy that people are able to get online or publish anything that is not a 100 percent fact,” she said at the time. “That really is messing with my life. How are you able to do it and get away with it? I just learned that you really can’t get away with that, and I’m going to get you. Right now I’m just getting all my stuff together because I’m seeing it. Yeah, you keep doing that. I’m going to spin the block on you.”
In an interview with Rolling Stone one day before the suit against Cooper was filed, Pete’s attorney, Jordan Siev, spoke to their efforts to pursue purveyors of false information about the rapper. “Make no mistake about it, we are looking at everyone who picks up these false statements and anyone who publishes them or repeats them,” he said. “We’re studying very carefully for a defamation claim because this is outrageous.”
This story was updated on 10/31 with a statement from Unite the People
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