United States District Court · Southern District of Florida · No. 1:25-cv-20757-JB
Before the suit
The events preceding the case itself. Only events that happened after 10/1/22 can support a federal claim.
Plaintiff The side that sued
Stand-in name
Jane Doe is the stand-in name courts use when someone is allowed to sue without using their real name. The judge allowed it here the day after she asked, and the law she’s suing under allows for it, so this page doesn’t name her either. Her complaint says that she lives in the Miami area, that she’s a live streamer like Bonnell, and that she was new to political streaming when the two of them first started talking.
Defendant The side that was sued
Streamer, known online as Destiny
He’s a live streamer and political commentator who goes by Destiny. He was born in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1988. In 2011 he started streaming the video game StarCraft II full time, and he was one of the first people to make a living that way. Around 2016 he moved over to politics, and he’s best known now for long live debates where he argues from the liberal side. He lives in Miami Beach.
Oct 2019
She sends him a private message after a debate on a streaming platform. A friendship follows.
She sent the first message. Both sides describe what followed the same way, as a friendship where they eventually shared their sex lives with each other, though they disagreed on the implications of that fact.
Bonnell Decl. ¶ 5 · ECF No. 42-1
Sept 12, 2020
In Miami, consensually. Neither side has ever said otherwise.
When the court denied a motion later on, it pointed this out in detail. Neither side says the recording, or what it shows, happened without consent. That matters, because it leaves only the sharing in dispute.
ECF No. 142 at 5
Apr 9, 2022
Over Discord, to an account he took to be a college student’s. He admits this, and the plaintiff now accepts the date.
His declaration puts the transmission at 8:36 p.m. Eastern. The account was actually run by an adult man in the United Kingdom who was using a real woman’s identity. That came out three and a half years later, when the woman herself was deposed. He states he has sent the video to no one since.
Bonnell Decl. (Apr 2025) ¶¶ 9–10 · ECF No. 42-1 · Bonnell Decl. (Jan 2026) ¶¶ 2, 3, 5, 7 · ECF No. 213
Oct 1, 2022
15 U.S.C. § 6851 takes effect
The statute isn’t retroactive. It covers events that happened after this line and nothing before it, which is why the dates of what he sent decide whether a federal court can hear the case at all.
Nov 3, 2023
To a witness known as “Abbymc.” Bonnell has denied it from the start, and it is one of the two ways the federal claim can survive.
The witness swears she received the video by Google Drive link and recognized the plaintiff. Her message to a friend that morning is timestamped 10:41 a.m. The defendant’s log puts his only links that day at 2:39 p.m. The plaintiff reads that as a four-hour gap, and his reply never addresses it. At his deposition, though, he said he was not sure which time zone the log uses. If it is universal time, 2:39 p.m. would be 10:39 a.m. in Miami, two minutes before her message.
Abbymc Decl. ¶¶ 6–7 · ECF Nos. 49-2, 86-1 · Dep. Tr. 221:3–13
Nov 29, 2024
A third party operating as “SoloTinyLeaks” publishes a cache of his private files, including this video, to a forum. Neither party consented.
Dec 2024
He hires a lawyer who specializes in this, and he and the plaintiff work together on requests to get sites to take the video down.
Their messages show him hunting for a DMCA contact, emailing a registrar and passing her a search-removal form while she sends him further URLs. He cites this as proof there was nothing left for an injunction to order him to do.
ECF No. 51-3
Jan 22, 2025
Her lawyers send him a formal written notice to preserve everything that might be relevant to the case.
The letter directed him to “preserve, maintain, prevent spoliation of, and not destroy” anything related to the matter. From this date at the latest, he had a legal duty to keep all evidence. She argues the duty started earlier, at the November leak.
ECF No. 21-3
Jan–Feb 2025
He later says on a livestream that he “ran like a whole redact” of his Discord during this time. He said it on a stream, not in court, but it became central to the spoliation motion more than a year later.
He said it on a stream in May 2026, and the sanctions motion quoted it back at him. He also testified that he deleted his messages with one witness “sometime maybe at the end of 2024,” and that he had saved copies with Redact, an app for deleting messages in bulk, and handed those copies over. His position is that removing material from view is not the same as destroying it.
Peters Decl. ¶¶ 38–39, ECF No. 263 · Dep. Tr. 243:25–244:10
The case
Filed February 18, 2025. From here on, almost everything is on the docket.
Feb 18, 2025
It makes four claims. Only the federal one gives a federal court the power to hear the case.
The four claims are under the federal law, under Florida’s law against sexual cyberharassment, for intentional infliction of emotional distress, and for invasion of privacy. Only the federal claim lets a federal court hear the case. The other three are state-law claims, and they can only stay in this court because they came attached to the federal one.
ECF No. 1
Feb 20, 2025Granted
The court granted it the day after it was filed, and he did not object. The order keeps any filing that identifies her under seal, lets his lawyers have her real name if they ask, and forbids giving it to the media unless her lawyers agree. The federal law itself allows people suing under it to use a stand-in name.
ECF No. 7 · 15 U.S.C. § 6851(b)(3)(B)
Apr 3, 2025
She asks for four forms of relief, five months after the leak.
The plaintiff asked the court to order the defendant to stop sharing the video, take down the copies he controlled, and tell third parties in writing to remove their own. The fourth request was to preserve evidence. The first three all aimed at publication that had already happened, which is most of why the motion failed.
ECF No. 21 at 6
Apr 4, 2025Denied
The judge finds no emergency. Her own lawyer admits that “most of the damage has already been done.”
Judge Becerra: “There is nothing that’s happening today that wasn’t happening when you filed the suit.” The court also told counsel that spoliation relief needs its own separately filed motion under Rule 37(e), advice not acted on for another thirteen months.
ECF No. 38 at 5:19–23, 6:3
Apr 25, 2025
He files screenshots of the same chat taken from both ends. His end reads 4/9/2022, and the recipient’s end reads 10/04/2022.
May 2, 2025
Abbymc swears that he sent her the video in November 2023. It is the main evidence for one of the two ways the federal claim can survive.
It’s two pages long and sworn under penalty of perjury. It says he sent her the video and that she recognized the plaintiff in it, but it attaches no message, no link and no file to back that up. That gap becomes the defendant’s main objection when he asks for summary judgment.
ECF No. 49-2
May 23, 2025
Filed after the negotiation between counsel breaks down.
Before filing a motion like this, the lawyers have to talk it through, which courts call meeting and conferring. The court later found that her side declared those talks “exhausted” about thirty-six hours after sending an eleven-page draft, and two minutes before his lawyer replied that he had already marked it up.
Jun 3, 2025
Both parties testify for about two and a half hours, in open court.
She testified that she had never personally seen any proof that he sent the video to anyone after October 2022. He testified that he never got her consent to share it, spoken or written, but believed their earlier messages implied it.
ECF No. 90 at 55:7–13, 83:7–13
Sep 2, 2025Granted in part
The court writes its own version, closer to the draft the two sides had worked out together.
It covers intimate images, her legal name, the names of sealed non-party witnesses, and medical records, and it bars disclosure of any of it to the media or to “any online broadcast, podcast, stream, post or direct message.”
ECF No. 116 ¶¶ 2, 7
Sep 4, 2025Granted
The court calls the evidence of the timeline “murky at best.”
Sep 5, 2025
Adds the Abbymc transmission and the continuing-accessibility theory.
Both are attempts to show something he did after the law took effect that the law covers. The court had just ruled that the changes would not be futile, meaning they had at least some chance of working, which is a low bar but not nothing.
ECF No. 120 ¶¶ 13–15, 45
Sep 8–9, 2025
On a livestream he describes reconstructing a log. Days later he files a log with the court. Whether it is the same one is disputed.
On the stream he said, “There is no original file. I’m trying to reconstruct the file. I’m artificially creating a file by reconstructing a log of stuff.” On September 19 he filed a log and swore it was a true and correct record of everything he had sent Abbymc. The plaintiff says that is the file he was describing. At his deposition he said he did not remember which file the stream was about, that the filed log was a filtered list of his own sent messages, and that the merging only lined up timestamps and changed no message. Her filings date the clip to September 8 in one place and September 9 in another.
ECF Nos. 139 at 13, 150 (audio), 132-6 · Dep. Tr. 311:4–313:20 (the clip, as played), 305:8–307:19, 314:5–318:9
Sep 19, 2025
He argues no jurisdiction: the only transmission of the video was before the law took effect.
It challenges the facts behind jurisdiction, under Rule 12(b)(1). A motion like that lets the judge look at evidence beyond what the complaint and answer say, instead of assuming the complaint is true, and it puts the burden on the plaintiff to show the court has the power to hear the case.
ECF No. 132
Oct 3, 2025
She asserts in a footnote that the person he sent the video to was a minor. That claim becomes the Rule 11 fight.
The claim rested on a redacted driving record that was supposed to show the recipient’s date of birth. It fell apart three weeks later at the Illinois deposition, when the woman whose identity was used testified that a man had been running the account. What the Rule 11 motion really goes after is not the footnote itself but her side’s refusal to file a correction afterward.
ECF Nos. 139 at 7 n.2, 139-2
Oct 6, 2025Denied
The court also notes that no spoliation motion has been filed.
The court found no harm that money could not make up for later. She had waited five months without a convincing reason, and her own post saying she wanted him to “lose so much money” showed that money could cover the harm. The request about the forum failed because the rule for these orders, Rule 65, only binds the people in the case and those acting with them, and the forum is neither.
ECF Nos. 143 at 12, 142
Oct 23, 2025
The woman whose identity the “Rose” account used testifies that she never spoke to him, and that an adult man in the United Kingdom was pretending to be her.
She testified she never messaged him, never saw the video, and had no idea who the plaintiff was. She also explained why the leaked screenshots carry European date formatting, the single most useful fact the defense obtained in discovery.
Brettler Decl. Ex. L at 67:13–24, 79:22–80:7
Oct 27, 2025Denied
The hearing was public and the material was already in her own filings.
Nov 3, 2025
She had not asked the court to excuse her, and because she did not show, both her deposition and his get pushed back.
Nov 5, 2025
The court also orders the plaintiff to explain why she missed hers.
Later, she points to this stay to explain why her spoliation motion came so late. She argues that her proof he got rid of things on purpose could only come from his own testimony, and she could not get that until the court lifted the stay the following April.
Nov 21, 2025
A month before the cutoff. She produces nothing, and he never moves to compel.
Dec 1, 2025
Over the minor allegation in the footnote.
Safe harbor observed and errata demanded first. His strongest point is relevance: whether the recipient was seventeen has no bearing on whether the transmission preceded October 1, 2022, which is the only thing his own motion is about. The court denied the motion without prejudice on April 21, 2026.
Dec 4, 2025
The sanctions motion is itself sanctionable.
It rests on the Advisory Committee’s own note that a sanctions motion is subject to the rule, and on decisions from this district, one written by this magistrate judge, holding that Rule 11 is not a vehicle for resolving a disputed fact. It was denied without prejudice in the same order as his.
Dec 16, 2025
With the production disputes unresolved and no motion to compel ever filed.
Jan 30, 2026
The same jurisdictional argument, now on the full discovery record.
Under Rule 56 he may carry his initial burden simply by pointing to an absence of evidence. He went further and filed affirmative evidence too, including his log of the media files he had sent the witness. The plaintiff says it is the log he described reconstructing on stream four months earlier.
Feb 13, 2026
Asking the court to defer for discovery not yet taken.
It asked the court to deny or defer until his deposition and a Swedish deposition could be taken. It was the third time in four months she had asked the court to wait for discovery, and the court had already remarked on the pattern.
ECF No. 216
Mar 30, 2026Denied
The court calls the requested restraint a prior restraint with “no limiting principle.”
Mar 30, 2026
What a jury would be allowed to hear, if there is a trial.
Hers seeks to exclude implied-consent evidence under Rules 412 and 403. His seeks to exclude the minor allegation, the Abbymc declaration and exhibit, and her use of a pseudonym in front of a jury. Both are undecided.
Apr 21, 2026Denied
Depositions ordered within ten days, and no other discovery permitted. The trial moves to August 10.
A paperless order, and a consequential one. It denied the two Rule 11 motions without prejudice, which leaves either side free to file again, and granted her request to move the trial only in part. The words “no other discovery is permitted during these ten days” are what the defendant later invokes against the second Abbymc declaration, produced ten days after the order.
ECF No. 240
Apr 27 & 30, 2026
His testimony supplies most of the intent evidence for the spoliation motion.
He was deposed on April 30. He testified that the files behind the Drive links “are not existing anymore,” and that the video stayed available to anyone logged into his Discord account or the recipient’s until he deleted it around November 2024. On the log, he said the version he filed was a filtered list of the media he had sent the witness, and that the merging he had described on stream was to make timestamps line up. His transcript stayed sealed until a redacted copy was filed that September.
Dep. Tr. 237:3–6, 199:15–200:11, 305:25–306:6, 314:18–315:18 · ECF No. 305-1
Apr 30, 2026
Produced after discovery closed, and days after she testified she had no recent contact with the witness.
Materially identical to the first, adding no new facts. It arrived after the close of discovery, after the court had barred further discovery, and days after that testimony. The defendant asks that it be disregarded entirely under Rules 26(e) and 37(c)(1).
ECF No. 249-1
May 8, 2026
She concedes the April 2022 date. The case narrows to two routes across the line.
The concession matters more than the opposition. Having pleaded October 2022, then “sometime in 2022,” she now accepts April 9, 2022. From here the federal claim can survive only on the Abbymc transmission or on continuing accessibility.
ECF No. 247 at 1, 3
May 18, 2026
Seven weeks after the motion deadline, five months after discovery closed.
It asks for judgment on liability, or an adverse-inference instruction. Its strongest point is one the defendant concedes: the sworn log of everything he sent the witness omits two Google Drive links that his own produced chat thread shows him sending.
ECF No. 262
Jun 1, 2026
Untimely, and no bad faith.
He argues timing first and the substance second. He is on solid ground on timing. His opposition cites two earlier opinions in which Edwin Torres, the magistrate judge on this case, turned down spoliation motions as too late. He is weakest on the log, where he admits the two links were left off and says it was an accident.
Jun 30, 2026
No new date will be set until the court has ruled on the spoliation motion.
Aug 17, 2026
Including a previously undisclosed witness, two days before the hearing.
The defendant objects that the witness was never disclosed under Rule 26 and could not be deposed, that her statement is hearsay, and that her evidence concerns the pre-statute transmission in any event, so it cannot cure the jurisdictional defect. Her declaration is sealed. A later filing by the plaintiff, since struck, describes it: she says he told her in January 2025 that he was “wiping” his Discord logs, and that she watched him archive and then delete their messages that February.
Aug 19, 2026
Supplemental filings ordered. No ruling.
The court directed both sides to file the underlying materials: the deposition transcript, the expert report, and the document requests and responses. It also asked each side to say which sealed entries should be opened. Nothing was decided from the bench.
Aug 24, 2026
He lists ten sealed entries. She agrees, provided they are redacted as the protective orders require.
The court had asked for the lists from the bench. No unsealing order has followed. The same day she filed two notices setting out which earlier filings she relies on, one for the spoliation motion and one against summary judgment.
Aug 26, 2026Stricken
And summary judgment is put on hold until the spoliation motion is decided.
The day before, she had filed two responses of about eighteen pages each to his objections to her supplemental declarations. The court struck both, noting that it had given neither side leave to file anything further on the sanctions motion. A separate order the same day stayed summary judgment and promised an evidentiary hearing.
Sep 4, 2026
The motion to dismiss and summary judgment now wait for the spoliation ruling.
A paperless order widening the August stay to cover the motion to dismiss. It fixes the order of decision: spoliation first, then jurisdiction. The same day she filed a redacted copy of his deposition transcript, the first of the four to reach the public docket.
Oct 2, 2026
He and her forensic expert testify. No ruling from the bench.
Set by an order of September 8 and held in Miami. The minute entry records two witnesses, the defendant and Jesus Peña, and says an order will follow. The defense put in one exhibit: her message to him on the night of the leak, asking him to “please just make sure to delete” the videos. No transcript of the hearing is on the docket yet.
Oct 7, 2026 · the record ends
The spoliation motion comes first, and it could hand the plaintiff judgment on liability without a trial. The motion to dismiss and summary judgment would each end the case outright, and both are stayed until it is decided. There is no trial date.
Read as a whole the pattern is one-sided: the plaintiff has lost most of what she has asked for: on delay, on choosing the wrong procedural vehicle, on asking for a restraint the First Amendment does not permit in a civil case. None of it goes to whether her underlying account is true. The judge who denied her injunction also found her testimony “fully credible.”
Notes
Built from the complete public docket, 311 entries as of October 7, 2026, as archived by the Free Law Project from PACER. Every characterization here comes from a filing, an exhibit, or a signed order.
Every docket number in a citation opens that filing, in the archive it came from. The court’s paperless orders have no document behind them, so those open the docket entry itself. Deposition citations open the transcript at the page cited.
A great deal. The plaintiff’s legal name, several witness identities, three of the four deposition transcripts and many exhibits were never filed publicly. The defendant’s transcript reached the docket in September 2026, redacted. Some of what each side relies on cannot be read by anyone outside the case.
The plaintiff sued under a pseudonym and the court granted it. Non-party witnesses appear here only by the screen names already used in public filings. The explicit material quoted in the record is described, not reproduced.
Not legal advice, not a finding, and not a verdict. Allegations are allegations. No court has resolved the central factual dispute, and the two motions that could have were still pending when this record ends.
If something here is missed, misrepresented or unfairly portrayed, let me know. Point me at a filing or record and I will verify it on my end. I actively look to correct, improve and remain unbiased.
No account, no name, no email. The submission stores what you typed, your address and your browser string, to make abuse traceable and for nothing else.
Record reviewed through October 7, 2026. Nothing filed after that date is reflected here.
Plain English
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