Canadian YouTuber Jonathan “Frauditor Troll” Huneault returned with a new reply to a motion to dismiss his counter claim in Christopher “Denver Metro Audits” Cordova’s lawsuit against him and a video reading of that motion in which he attempted to turn a brief comment by fan proclaimed king of all auditors SeanPaul “Long Island Audit” Reyes into a full-throated endorsement of his defense.
Reyes is a controversial figure inside the first amendment community who has been a target for many negative videos by Huneault in the past. He recently seemed to turn against his fans, alarming his highly conservative fan base with liberal views on such matters as ICE activities within America while telling his fans to unsubscribe from his channel if they don’t agree with his views.
In January, he refused to speak to border patrol agents at a border patrol checkpoint in Texas resulting in his temporary detainment until he could be identified. He then classified his actions as a “fifth amendment audit” despite not invoking his fifth amendment rights at all during the detainment.
Reyes then raised a little over $16,000.00 off of the incident which he said would be used to take his electronic billboard truck to protest at the homes at the border patrol agents who were involved in his brief detainment. He has yet to use the money to fund such protests.
The YouTuber would go on to travel to Minnesota to document anti-ICE protests, where he began a series of existing attacks on his own fanbase. He later would go on to announce his independent run for the United States Congress, not in the current election cycle but in 2028, where he would vie for a seat in heavily conservative Long Island, New York.
Reyes has been actively posting anti-Donald Trump and anti-ICE messaging on his Twitter/X feed and on the night he posted on Huneault’s YouTube channel, he also posted multiple times in reply to messages on own YouTube channel.
Reyes’ post on Huneault’s YouTube page consisted of the following:
“So you couldn’t afford / didn’t want to pay your former attorney who was billing you for everything under the sun… so you switched to a cheaper lawyer… who believes in the mission, is that about right? I am all for you winning the lawsuit because unlike some others I am a free speech absolutist. I am just glad that you finally get to experience how expensive attorneys can be. Now you understand why raising money is necessary. Good luck!”
Huneault used the comment as a ringing endorsement to attack Cordova, stating that even members of the auditing community were aligned against Cordova, despite no clear attack by Reyes on Cordova.
Reyes, for his part, was active in Huneault’s comments for the video. He again gave no observed endorsement of Huneault or his case but instead sniped comments in order to further his newly found political views.
As for Huneault’s latest filing, this was a reply to Cordova’s motion to dismiss counterclaims that were filed by Huneault’s previous attorney, “Superstar” Steve Vondran. New attorney “Sinsational” Simon Lin added a new argument, that the YouTube terms of service essentially strips a creator of rights to file copyright infringement suits based on the following passage in the user agreement:
“You also grant each other user of the Service a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to access your Content through the Service, and to use that Content, including to reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works, display, and perform it, only as enabled by a feature of the Service (such as video playback or embeds). For clarity, this license does not grant any rights or permissions for a user to make use of your Content independent of the Service.”
Introducing the new claim, Lin states: “Notably, the also Plaintiff knows of the YouTube Terms of Service, where the above license is explicitly referenced. Dkt. No. 39 ¶ 4, 36 and 38. No user that uploads videos to YouTube could ever, in good faith, claim that they were not granting a license to other users of YouTube to use the videos that were uploaded. If it were otherwise, every YouTube user would become a copyright infringer. “
Lin’s statement, when taken at extreme value, essentially implies that copyright protection does not exist on YouTube as, by uploading a video, a user gives others a license to repurpose their videos or use portions of their material without license.
If Judge Virginia K. Demarchi accepted this argument, there would be wide ranging reactions from both YouTube itself and media corporations that use copyright bots and an army of attorneys to protect their works from misuse or “fair use” on the service.
We’ll continue to monitor how this new spin plays out going forward.
While he did not make a full-on request for donations to his GoFundMe, Huneault’s video did nothing to spark a market that has been dead this week.
Huneault’s Help us Fight this anti-free speech retaliation lawsuit campaign won Friday with $2.00 in conversion rate adjusted income.
Sunday saw no donations or conversion rate adjustments, leaving the entire field filled with goose eggs as no campaigns that we follow made money for the final day of the weekend.
