Don Lemon has sued Elon Musk and X, formerly Twitter, over his canceled content deal with the platform, accusing the billionaire and and the company of fraud, negligent misrepresentation, misappropriation of name and likeness, and breach of express contract.
The suit comes over four months after a very public fallout after Lemon’s short-lived X program ended after just one episode with Musk as the first guest.
In the suit, filed in San Francisco on Thursday, Lemon alleged that in January, Musk and X had agreed to pay the former CNN journalist a guaranteed $1.5 million for a one-year exclusive deal with the platform ($200,000 up front, the rest in quarterly installments) along with a majority cut of the ad revenue from his content and a renewal option, among other sweeteners.
Musk ended the deal soon after filming the first episode, after Lemon had reportedly asked Musk about his Ketamine usage and the 2024 election. Musk sent Lemon’s agent a text saying that “contract is canceled.”
According to the lawsuit, Musk had represented to Lemon that the journalist “would have full authority and control over the work he produced even if disliked by Defendants,” further claiming that Musk said there wasn’t a formal contract in place as Musk said there was no need to “fill out paperwork.”
Musk and X didn’t immediately respond to request for comment on the lawsuit. When the show was canceled in March, Musk had tweeted that Lemon’s “approach was basically just ‘CNN, but on social media,’ which doesn’t work, as evidenced by the fact that CNN is dying.”
“And, instead of it being the real Don Lemon, it was really just [former CNN president] Jeff Zucker talking through Don, so lacked authenticity,” Musk tweeted.
Musk and X tried to court Lemon soon after he was fired from CNN, but Lemon claimed in the suit that he’d expressed reservations about an exclusive deal given the controversies that had surrounded X and Musk since he bought the platform in 2022. In December of 2023, Lemon had a dinner with X CEO Linda Yaccarino and head of content, talent and brand sales Brett Weitz, telling them it was crucial that he could “maintain his journalistic integrity” The two executives assured Lemon that he’d have their full support, the suit said.
Lemon alleged in the suit that X had pressured him to sign the deal ahead of the annual CES trade show in Las Vegas this past January, and for him to send a post to social media announcing the deal that same day.
“Defendants deliberately misrepresented what they intended to do,” Lemon’s lawsuit said. “Defendants knew that if they accurately represented to Lemon that the purpose and meaning of the exclusive partnership deal was to use Lemon’s name, likeness, reputation, and identity to rehabilitate Defendants reputation and draw in advertisers to the X platform, Lemon would never have agreed to do what he did and Defendants would have been unable to utilize Lemon to keep up with their ongoing efforts to woo advertisers.”
