Why did George Santos show up outside Trump trial court?

Disgraced former congressman George Santos surprised reporters and bystanders on Thursday when he showed up outside the court where Donald Trump is on criminal trial.

Mr Trump is on trial on charhes of falsifying business records in a bid to conceal a hush money payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges and has denied all wrongdoing – and denied that the affair even took place.

On day three of the trial on Thursday, Mr Santos – the ex-congressman and vocal Mr Trump supporter – was spotted outside of Manhattan criminal court as the former president’s criminal proceedings continued in court.

However, it doesn’t appear that the former lawmaker was there to lend support to the former president.

Instead, Mr Santos was passing by on his way to a different event: a hearing in his own court case – a lawsuit against late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel.

“Today’s a big day,” Mr Santos said in a selfie video posted to X on Thursday. “I’m actually in federal court against Jimmy Kimmel for my fraud case against him.”

The hearing was in Manhattan federal court, just blocks away from Mr Trump’s courtroom.

The former congressman alleges Mr Kimmel deceived him into making more than a dozen videos on Cameo — a mobile app that allows users to pay for personalised videos from celebrities — that Mr Kimmel then played on his show “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

Mr Santos sued him in February for copyright infringement, fraudulent inducement, breach of contract and unjust enrichment.

The late-night personality took to his show to mock the disgraced lawmaker just after the suit was filed, highlighting that Mr Santos claims he believed video requests about a dog