A new filing in Kevin Hart’s ongoing legal battle with his former friend, Jonathan “J.T.” Jackson has led to the release of an interview transcript in which the comedian discusses the events surrounding his 2017 sex tape scandal.
The transcript was attached as an exhibit to an Aug. 6 document filed by Jackson’s lawyers in support of his suit against Hart. Jackson accused Hart of breaching a settlement agreement they’d signed in 2021, which pertained to the sex tape scandal and related felony extortion charges brought against Jackson, but eventually dropped.
The transcript captures a Sept. 2017 interview between Hart and a district attorney investigator. In it, Hart recounts an Aug. 2017 trip to Las Vegas, during which the comedian slept with a woman named Montia Sabbag, while his wife, Eniko, was pregnant.
Hart reveals he was on ecstasy the night of the incident, claiming a friend (who goes unnamed) pressured him into taking the drug by telling him, “I’m not gonna let you do anything.” Hart eventually said “fuck it” and put the drug in his drink.
While Hart acknowledged he was “fucked up” that night, he said he wasn’t totally gone, and even his security detail said they weren’t “worried” about him. He also admitted that he’d been flirting with Sabbag throughout the night, but insisted he wasn’t planning on sleeping with her: “It was a nice flirt. And I knew that it could happen if I wanted it to. I didn’t press the issue, because at that pint I really don’t want it.”
Hart went on to say that Sabagg eventually got in bed with him, and while they did not have sex that night, they did the following morning. The comedian went on to discuss the hidden camera that captured the act, but at no point did he accuse anyone of placing it. He did, however, seem to suggest that Sabagg knew where the camera was based on how she acted while they were having sex.
“While we were having sex, out of nowhere, she was facing one way,” Hart said, adding: “She throws herself backward on the bed. And that was her attempt to get closer to the camera. When she did that, I pulled her back. You never see me having sex in that area. That’s when she got up, she then sat on the bench, which is in the clear camera view. She sat on the bench and started talking to me. And in that video, if you look, there’s a moment where I walk around and I look in her phone. She called me over there to say something to me, so you can get a clear view of me.”
A representative for Hart did not immediately return Rolling Stone’s request for comment.
Sabbag has confirmed she was the woman in the video, but claimed she had nothing to do with the recording, or the extortion attempt that followed. Sabbag filed a $60 million suit of her own against Jackson and Hart in 2022, claiming they created the tape to promote one of Hart’s stand-up tours, but the suit was ultimately dismissed.
Not long after Hart and Jackson’s trip to Vegas, Hart’s wife, Nikka, allegedly received an anonymous message that claimed her husband was “cheating” on her; the message also purportedly contained a Dropbox link with an edited video of Hart engaged in an intimate act with a woman. That evening, Hart posted an apology video on social media. In the comments, someone using the Instagram handle, Misterjood, said, “give me $5 Million or I’m releasing the video. No need to make this go public. You had your chance.”
Hours later, the video footage was leaked and soon the FBI was investigating the extortion plot. While Jackson was arrested, he was eventually cleared.
His lawsuit against Hart, brought earlier this summer, relates to a 2021 social media post from Hart on the whole matter. Jackson claims Hart was required to use “specific verbiage” to “publicly exonerate” Jackson, but the comedian’s wording “dilute[d] this intent by framing the exoneration more as a conclusion to a chapter in Hart’s own life rather than a clear an unequivocal exoneration of” Jackson.
In the Aug. 6 filing, which contains the deposition transcript, Jackson’s lawyers argue Hart’s interview with a district attorney investigator supports this claim: In the interview, the filing alleges, “Hart confirms multiple key points that refute the claims made against [Jackson] and show Hart instigated criminal extortion charges that led to [Jackson’s] arrest.”
Michaela Coel in ‘The Christophers.’Claudette Barius/NEON
