Megan Thee Stallion’s former cameraman Emilio Garcia, who’s suing the rapper for creating a hostile work environment along with various other labor and wage violations, included the accusation in the suit that the rapper had sex with someone in a vehicle they were sharing as Garcia was trapped inside. However, Garcia’s own statement in the lawsuit implies that the rap star may not have been aware that he was in the car at the time.
It had been reported this week in an exclusive interview with Garcia for NBC News that he had been “forced” to watch the star have sex while “trapped” in a moving vehicle. Garcia told the outlet, “I felt uncomfortable,” in the car, “I was kind of frozen, and I was shocked at kind of just the overall audacity to do this right, right beside me.” It was then reported that Megan Thee Stallion told Garcia, “Don’t ever discuss what you saw,” the next day.
However, an important point in Garcia's story that could get lost in translation is that “[Megan Thee Stallion] inquired whether [Garcia] was in the SUV the previous night,” of the incident in question, the court docs say, after which “[Garcia] confirmed that he was.”
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Garcia's attorney Ronald L. Zambrano tells The Daily Beast that he sees the rapper asking Garcia if he was in the vehicle as an admission that she had been aware. Zambrano says her ignorance is “inconsistent with her asking him the next morning.”
“You think she just guessed correctly to ask the one person that was there? Did she go around asking everybody in her camp if they happen to be in the car while she was having sex that night?” Zambrano adds. “She remembered and she took steps to try to intimidate him to stay quiet.”
Even though the car sex incident has become a centerpiece in the coverage of Garcia's suit, the rapper’s lawyer Alex Spiro tells The Daily Beast, “This is an employment claim for money—with no sexual harassment claim filed and with salacious accusations to attempt to embarrass her.” Upon review, the list of complaints for damages in the suit does not include sexual harassment, but does allege hostile work environment harassment along with the eight labor and business code violations having to do with wages to which Garcia alleges he is entitled.
In response to Spiro, Zambrano tells The Daily Beast, “It is an utter lie that we have not alleged a hostile work environment based on the sex claim. It is literally the first claim listed in the lawsuit.”
He adds, “None of this is intended to embarrass [Megan Thee Stallion] but merely an attempt to hold her accountable for her illegal actions just as anyone else should be, celebrity or not. The reaction that my client should not have been offended or somehow thankful for being in a car while she had sex with another woman is an absolute double standard. If our client was a woman and was forced to watch a man have sex in the vehicle with her, there would be no outrage if she was offended.”
Garcia uses the sex anecdote in the suit to demonstrate his “intolerable working conditions” claims, which include allegations that the rapper called him a “fat bitch” and told him to spit his food out while he was eating. The crux of the complaint is that Garcia says he was fired “in retaliation for his complaints of wage and hour violations,” after he “confided” to the rapper’s former makeup artist that he was considering quitting on account of her “possessiveness.”
Elsewhere in the suit, Garcia cites Megan Thee Stallion’s hiring of another cameraman as a reason he considered quitting, before he was informed by the star’s team that she would no longer be needing his services. His attorney says that Garcia's firing was an example of “egregious and illegal behavior.”
It’s probably fair to say that without the car sex accusation, the wage suit might not have gotten as much coverage, potentially validating Spiro’s claim that the story was meant to “embarrass” the rapper. But Zambrano insists that the case is centered on ensuring a “workplace free of harassment that any other worker in any other industry is legally obligated to have,” as people often expect “those who work for stars should just deal with this egregious and illegal behavior and suck it up and be thankful for their access.”
“That is a recipe for the abuse in treatment and underpayment, not only in this lawsuit, but in many other stories that are yet to be told,” Zambrano continues.
Spiro, meanwhile, simply tells The Daily Beast, “We will deal with this in court.”
