A senior Texan Republican official has threatened legal action against British satirist Sacha Baron Cohen after being duped into performing sexually explicit, absurd counter-terrorism drills for a new feature film.
Michael Aboud, the chair of the El Paso County Republican Party, expressed fury after discovering his participation in what he believed was a serious security documentary would feature prominently in Cohen’s new satirical project, Ali G: Who Iz I?, Guardian Australia Culture reported.
Denouncing the comic actor as "a liar and a pervert", the conservative functionary confirmed he intends to launch legal proceedings against the filmmaker over scenes likely to cause severe professional and political embarrassment.
Grotesque drills disguised as counter-terrorism
In scenes detailed in early reports of the production, Aboud is shown undertaking an unconventional tactical defence programme alongside fellow sympathisers of the Make America Great Again (Maga) movement.
The instruction was spearheaded by one of Cohen’s most notorious satirical personas: Colonel Erran Morad, an aggressive, heavily accented veteran of Israel’s intelligence apparatus.
According to Guardian Australia Culture, the footage depicts Aboud strapping protective plastic buttocks over his trousers before learning how to repel potential assailants. Under Morad’s direction, participants were reportedly instructed to discharge projectile rounds from between the artificial buttocks by repeatedly pumping an attached rubber phallus.
Aboud had agreed to take part in the filming under the impression that he was contributing to a legitimate educational programme exploring foreign counter-terrorism strategies.
Legal threats face formidable First Amendment hurdles
Despite Aboud’s vow to seek redress in court, legal observers suggest any civil action against Cohen faces virtually insurmountable obstacles under United States defamation and contract law.
Cohen’s production outfits routinely require prospective interviewees to sign exhaustive standard consent forms prior to filming. These contracts explicitly waive any rights to sue for emotional distress, fraud, misrepresentation, or reputational damage, granting producers sweeping authority to use the recorded material in any manner.
Previous high-profile targets who sought multi-million-dollar damages — equivalent to tens of millions in Australian dollars — have seen their claims summarily dismissed by US federal judges, who have repeatedly upheld the binding nature of the releases and the robust protections afforded to political satire under the First Amendment.
A well-worn playbook of political humiliation
The stunt mirrors the methodology deployed during Cohen’s 2018 television series Who Is America?, where the Morad character successfully hoodwinked several prominent conservative politicians into compromising public spectacles.
Most notoriously, former Georgia state lawmaker Jason Spencer was forced to resign from office after Morad persuaded him to shout racial slurs and bare his buttocks to ward off purported Islamist attackers. Former US Senate candidate Roy Moore also pursued an unsuccessful US$95 million (A$145 million) lawsuit after being presented on camera with a supposed "paedophile detector" that beeped in his presence.
While representatives for Cohen have yet to issue a formal response to Aboud’s public declarations, the El Paso official now faces intense domestic scrutiny within his own party apparatus as the satirical footage circulates among international audiences.