Don Lemon is suing Elon Musk over his canceled X partnership
Former CNN anchor Don Lemon filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk and his social media platform Thursday, alleging that the billionaire and X executives used “false promises” to entice him into an exclusive partnership then killed the deal after Musk was rankled by an interview with Lemon.
Musk, who rarely grants interviews, sat in March for an hour-long conversation in which Lemon peppered him with questions about some of his most controversial behavior, from his drug use to his growing political influence to his stance on content moderation. Hours after the interview was taped at Tesla’s Austin headquarters, Musk sent a curt text to Lemon’s agent canceling the deal.
“Executives used Don to prop up their advertising sales pitch, then canceled their partnership and dragged Don’s name through the mud,” Lemon’s attorney, Carney Shegerian, said in a statement. “Don is an accomplished and hard-hitting journalist who’s committed to defending his good name and holding X’s executives accountable.”
Musk and X did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Post.
X, formerly known as Twitter, sought the partnership with Lemon during a fraught period for the platform, which Musk purchased in 2022. At the time, X was struggling with an exodus of advertisers amid surging misinformation and troubling posts from Musk, notes the complaint Lemon filed in California superior court.
Executives “sought to affiliate with reputable figures whose name, likeness, identity, and reputation they could use to piggyback off to retain advertisers. Lemon was a top prospect,” the complaint states. “A gay, Black man with an excellent reputation and a household name, he was the perfect candidate to partner with to aid their dying advertisement revenue.”
The “content partnership” between Lemon and X was announced in early January with some fanfare. Musk said Lemon would be paid $1.5 million for a one-year deal to make exclusive videos on X, according to Lemon’s complaint, and touted additional rewards such as cash incentives and a portion of advertising revenue generated by his content.
After the partnership was agreed upon in January, Lemon spoke of X as “the biggest space for free speech in the world.” But things soured after the March interview with Musk, who was set to be the first guest on Lemon’s show.
By that point, Lemon had spent “hundreds of thousands of dollars” building his own media company, developing his show, hiring staff and building a studio to produce his content for X, Lemon details in his complaint. He was later told that he wouldn’t be paid because there was no signed agreement, “despite Musk previously representing to Lemon that there would be no need for a formal written agreement or to ‘fill out paperwork.’ ”
Musk and other X executives concealed their true intentions from the start, Lemon alleges in the complaint, knowing 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.”