Megan Thee Stallion stood before a federal jury in Miami Thursday morning to confront Milagro Gramz, the blogger she says has tormented her for years with false claims and damaging content tied to the 2020 shooting involving Tory Lanez.
The Grammy-winning rapper testified in her defamation lawsuit against Gramz, also known as Milagro Cooper. The trial has peeled back layers of online harassment, alleged coordination with Lanez’s family and the circulation of a doctored explicit video that Gramz admitted she believed was real.
“She said she felt the guilty verdict vindicated her, but said afterwards that the hatred became louder,” referencing Lanez’s conviction and 10-year sentence for shooting Pete in July 2020.
Megan Thee Stallion described the aftermath as a period of emotional and professional fallout, worsened by Gramz’s online attacks. The courtroom was shown X-rays of bullet fragments lodged in Megan Thee Stallion’s foot, which required surgery.
As she spoke about the shooting, Megan Thee Stallion grew visibly emotional, telling jurors she still attends therapy and often feels like “no one cared that she was shot.”
“Everybody thought that I deserved to get shot because I talk about sex and I twerk and I drink,” she testified, according to reporter Meghann Cunifh.
The trial, which began earlier this week, revealed that Milagro Gramz received more than $3,000 in electronic payments from Lanez’s father, Sonstar Peterson, between October 2020 and March 2022.
The transactions, which ranged from $200 to $1,000, coincided with Milagro Gramz’s public defense of Lanez and her repeated attempts to discredit Pete.
Text messages presented in court showed Gramz promising Lanez that an “exclusive story would change her life” in September 2020. She also visited Lanez and his father in Miami in February 2022, where she promoted his “Cap” music video.
When called to the stand, Milagro Gramz admitted she believed a sexually explicit deepfake video of Meg was authentic when she shared it with her audience.
Under Florida law, distributing non-consensual explicit content, even if believed to be real, can carry both criminal and civil consequences.
Gramz’s attorney, Jeremy McLymont, argued she was simply expressing her opinion, saying she called Megan Thee Stallion a liar “because Megan lied.”
But Megan Thee Stallion’s legal team pointed out Milagro Gramz had no direct knowledge of the shooting and refused to name her sources in court.
On the stand, Gramz also said the payments from Lanez’s father were for “personal reasons, including birthday gifts for her children and promotional work for Peterson’s podcast and book.”
But the timeline of those payments aligned closely with her anti-Megan content.
The lawsuit accuses Gramz of acting as a “paid surrogate” for Lanez, working to “denigrate, belittle, insult, and spread false statements about Ms. Pete on her online social media platforms, for no other reason than to bully, harass and punish Ms. Pete for Mr. Peterson’s conviction and to tarnish her reputation, causing emotional distress.”
Court filings also revealed that Milagro Gramz deleted thousands of messages and removed WhatsApp from her phone, in violation of a court preservation order. The judge told jurors they could assume the deleted material would have harmed Gramz’s defense.
Megan Thee Stallion’s attorneys argued the harassment campaign cost her significant career opportunities, including a potential partnership with Google.
Meg is seeking damages for cyberstalking, emotional distress, false light invasion of privacy and the distribution of altered sexual imagery.
“Just because you have freedom of speech does not mean you have freedom to bully,” Megan told reporters leaving the courthouse in a clip captured by reporter Cunfih.
AllHipHop
