Cardi B is asking for gossip blogger Tasha K to refund more than $100,000 in legal fees as a punishment for violating a settlement with talk of the rapper’s love life.
Tasha (Latasha Kebe) is in contempt of court for defying the bankruptcy settlement she signed last year to facilitate the payment of a $4 million defamation judgment to Cardi (Belcalis Almánzar). Tasha, who lost to Cardi at a 2022 trial over outlandish claims about drug use, STDs and prostitution, agreed as part of the repayment plan not to make any more disparaging statements about the star or her family.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Scott M. Grossman held last month that Tasha violated that deal with social media posts and radio show comments about Cardi’s estranged husband, Offset, and NFL player Stefon Diggs, the father of her youngest child. As a consequence, the judge said Tasha would have to cover the legal fees that Cardi racked up paying attorneys to monitor the blogger’s social media accounts and enforce her compliance with the settlement.
In a Wednesday (June 3) filing, first obtained and reported by Billboard, Cardi’s lawyers now say that the fees come out to $110,115. This is the amount billed by two law firms, Meland Budwick and Moore Pequignot, for more than 100 hours of “time-intensive and legally complex” work.
“The compliance enforcement award category required continuous monitoring of debtor’s social media activity across multiple platforms over a period of more than fourteen months following confirmation, the systematic documentation of violations spanning YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, Facebook, Threads and TikTok, as well as public radio broadcasts, and the preparation of a detailed evidentiary record for the motion,” write attorneys James Moon and Lisa Moore.
Tasha’s lawyer did not immediately return a request for comment on the fee accounting. The blogger has two weeks to respond in writing to Cardi’s request before Judge Grossman makes a final ruling.
Tasha declared bankruptcy in 2023, a year after a federal jury said she owes Cardi millions for making false and defamatory statements about the superstar on YouTube and other platforms. The blogger claimed she didn’t have the funds for this judgment and that it should be thrown out in the bankruptcy process.
But Cardi, who notably tweeted “imma come for everything …..BBHMM” (“b—- better have my money”) after the verdict, objected and urged the court to keep Tasha’s debt alive. Judge Grossman ultimately ruled in Cardi’s favor and refused to discharge the judgment.
In the wake of that ruling, Tasha filed a plan last February to pay $1.2 million to Cardi over five years and refrain from speaking publicly about her. Under that arrangement, Tasha still owes the remaining balance of the $4 million defamation verdict down the line.
The court approved Tasha’s plan, and relations between her and Cardi remained relatively peaceful for about a year. But that all changed in April, when the rapper’s attorneys alleged that Tasha must be punished for “willful violations” of the non-disparagement agreement.
Then, in May, Cardi filed a new lawsuit against Tasha’s husband, Cheickna Kebe, for allegedly plotting a fraudulent scheme to move around the couple’s assets so they would be shielded from collection after the defamation judgment. Cheickna has not yet responded to the claims in court.
