Clayton Howard pulls down his viral Cassie video and vows to stay quiet publicly, but he won’t call his words actual threats.
Cassie tried to get a gag order, and the man she was gunning for just pulled the video down and promised to keep his mouth shut while the case is active.
Clayton Howard, the pro se plaintiff suing Cassie and Diddy for $20 million, filed a response in Los Angeles federal court on June 12 telling Judge Anne Hwang he’d already deleted the nine-minute video at the center of Cassie’s protective order request and wouldn’t be making any more public statements about her or her attorneys until the case wraps up.
The video got him into this mess after Cassie’s legal team said he called her a “b####” and threatened to “burn her out with fire,” then added a line about stupid games and stupid prizes.
Per TMZ, her attorneys at the Wigdor firm also asked the court to skip the standard meet-and-confer process with Howard entirely, arguing that talking to him directly was pointless and would only expose them to more of the same.
Howard didn’t agree with any of that, but he’s at least promising to cool it publicly.
He wasn’t rolling over on the substance, though.
Howard told the court those lines weren’t threats, describing the “fire” comment as an extension of the “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” expression after he accused Cassie’s team of blowing smoke around his lawsuit.
The games-and-prizes line, he said, is just a figure of speech about consequences.
He called both statements “rhetorical hyperbole” and argued that ugly speech is still protected speech under the First Amendment, pushing back hard on the idea that a civil court can silence a litigant just because the words are offensive.
AllHipHop reported earlier that Cassie’s team was seeking a formal briefing schedule for the protective order after the video spread on social media. Howard’s counter is simple: the video is gone, the promise is on the record in a court filing, and there’s nothing left to restrain.
He also warned that waiving meet-and-confer rules completely would hurt him as a pro se litigant going up against a fully staffed law firm, and offered to communicate with opposing counsel by email only as a compromise.
Howard filed a written disavowal alongside his First Amendment argument, stating he has no intent to threaten, intimidate, or cause physical harm to Cassie, her lawyers, or anyone else.
He also acknowledged his word choices in the video were out of line with how he intends to conduct himself in front of the court, though he maintained that intemperate speech doesn’t lose constitutional protection.
Defense replies to Cassie’s motion to dismiss are due June 20, 2026.
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