Kevin Hart is being sued by a former friend for $12 million.
The Get Hard star has been accused of breaching a 2021 written settlement agreement that called on him to publicly exonerate Jonathan “J.T.” Jackson from “baseless extortion allegations” relating to the 45-year-old actor’s 2017 sex tape and cheating scandal.
Jackson was investigated after footage showing Hart getting intimate with a woman who wasn’t his wife Eniko Parrish in his suite at Las Vegas’ Cosmopolitan hotel was made public. After initially being charged with offenses including one count each of attempted extortion and extortion by threatening letter, the entire case was eventually dropped. Jackson claimed it was his former friend and his lawyers who had helped initiate both a raid on his house and subsequent charges.
He is suing for breach of written contract, fraud, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
“In the aftermath of the scandal, false extortion claims were filed against [Jackson], resulting in [Jackson] being wrongly accused.
“Although Hart did not personally accuse [Jackson] at this stage, he contributed to the initiation of these false claims,” reads court documents obtained by “Entertainment Tonight.”
The documents stated Kevin “claimed to have received an extortion email” on April 27, 2018, from someone “demanding 20 bitcoins to prevent the release of the sex tape, which had already been publicly released eight months earlier …
“During [Jackson’s] arrest on April 30, 2018, a voice recording captured [a DA investigator] specifically stating that [Jackson] was responsible for the extortion email that Hart allegedly received on April 27, 2018.
“This statement underscored the centrality of the fabricated email in justifying [Jackson’s] arrest and prosecution.”
But the former professional bowler alleged there is evidence to support that the email was faked.
“Strangely, the extortion email which Hart claimed to have received and forwarded to his legal team, which subsequently forwarded to the DA’s office, lacked any forwarding headers.
“Forwarding headers are essential for verifying the chain of custody and authenticity of an email. The absence of these headers within the extortion email further undermined its credibility and strongly suggests that it was not an authentic forwarded email, but rather a document that had been purportedly created or manipulated.” the court documents claimed.
His legal team claimed a forensics expert found “that the extortion email was created in Microsoft Word 2013 on May 17, 2019, over a year after the alleged extortion attempt,” which “indicates that the extortion email was not the original but rather a fabricated document.”
When it comes to the breach of written contract allegation, Jackson claimed their agreement called on his ex-pal to use “specific verbiage agreed upon by all parties to clarify [Jackson’s] innocence and remediate the reputational damage he sustained” and “to go live and post a video on his Instagram account, using the exact wording specified in the Contract, and leave it up for at least 24 hours.”
The agreement allegedly explicitly stated Hart promised to say on the video he posted on Oct. 27, 2021, that he was “proud to say that all charges against J.T. Jackson have been dropped and he is not guilty and had nothing to do with it.”
But the actor claimed the Me Time star “chose to manipulate the narrative, shifting the focus to himself rather than vindicating [Jackson]” when “the message that Hart was required to deliver, per the Contract, was to clear [Jackson’s] name unequivocally and restore his reputation.”
Jackson has claimed the ordeal has “caused significant mental health struggles” and exacerbated his PTSD, as well as causing “lost job opportunities and a tarnished public image.”
He added he has faced “significant challenges in securing acting roles due to the shadow of the unfounded allegations, as well as difficulties in finding other employment such as ride share and delivery jobs for UBER and LYFT, where background checks highlighted the extortion case against him.”
