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Whatever fallout came as a result of the canceled Freedom 250 concerts on the National Mall in Washington this summer, we can add a lawsuit that otherwise might not have happened. One prominent figure in that D.C. controversy,
Freedom Williams, who made newsmaking statements in his role as frontman for the touring edition of C+C Music Factory, has been sued by the act’s surviving co-founder, Robert Clivillés, in the wake of the political fracas.
The core issues of the lawsuit are unrelated to what happened with the Trump-related concert pullouts and cancellations. But Clivillés makes it clear in his lawsuit that a contentious, profanity-filled video Williams published on social media in the midst of the controversy was a last straw when it came to pushing him to file suit over rifts that go back three decades or more.
Clivillés is acting as his own attorney in the suit, which was filed Aug. 14 in the eastern district of New York in United States District Court. He charges Williams with defamation, fraud, trademark infringement, fraud, unfair competition and breach of contract, among other ills, and asks for cancellation of the trademark Williams now holds as well as compensatory and punitive damages adding up to $30 million.
Clivillés had been warning of his intention to sue Williams for weeks. On Sunday, he posted on social media a video filmed by a process server delivering papers to a figure identified as Williams, who initially keeps walking down the sidewalk as the server drops the paperwork on the ground, before finally agreeing to accept the documents. Williams’ face is not seen in the footage.
The recent video posted by Williams amid the Trump/Freedom 250 controversy comes up for description. “On May 29, 2026,” the suit says, “Williams posted a seven-minute video to the official C+C Music Factory account, which he controls through his fraudulent trademark claim, filmed while sitting on a toilet. In this video… Williams made statements invoking Adolf Hitler, used repeated racial slurs, and directed vulgar and sexually degrading language at members of the public. Plaintiff Clivilles had no warning of and no input into these statements and was forced to launch a competing official C+C Music Factory Instagram account to publicly disavow Williams’ conduct.”
Clivillés writes that he issued a public legal warning at that time for Williams to stop representing himself with the group name, but rather than back off, Williams allegedly doubled down on June 12 by issuing a new single, “Into the Future,” under the C+C Music Factory name.
Variety has been unable to reach Clivillés or Williams for comment on the dispute and lawsuit.
Throughout the suit, Clivillés makes a point in the suit of reaffirming that the letters F or W do not appear in C+C, and that he and the late David Cole (who died in 1995) were the sole members of the outfit, which broke through in 1990 with the No. 1 smash “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now),” succeeded the following year by the top 10 hits “Here We Go (Let’s Rock & Roll)” and “Things That Make You Go Hmmm…” Williams was listed as a featured artist on all three of those singles, alongside vocalists Martha Wash and Zelma Davis, who also got featured credit. It is Clivillés’ contention that giving Williams and the others featured billing was a way of marking them as guests, as opposed to group members, as is common in pop music. While Clivillés and Cole were primarily producer-writers, he makes the case that they were not unlike famous producers like Quincy Jones who issued albums under their own name while bringing in different singers.
In Clivillés’ telling, Williams had a production contract with him and Cole, but in mid-1991, around the time “Things That Make You Go Hmmm…” was released, “Williams demanded his release from the 1990 Agreement, stating he did not want to be associated with C+C Music Factory or with Clivillés and Cole’s enterprises going forward. He immediately stopped touring with the group. Sony Music negotiated his release and signed him to a full-length multi-album solo deal. Williams’ first and only solo album fared poorly commercially. C+C Music Factory continued without Williams. Clivillés and Cole released two more albums and several singles” before Cole died in January 1995.
The suit alleges that “beginning in 1996 and continuing to the present, Williams has been performing without authorization under the C+C Music Factory name, obtaining fraudulent trademark registrations in a name that refers to two other people, collecting five thousand to ten thousand dollars per unauthorized show worldwide, and most recently releasing commercial recordings and expanding the unauthorized use of the brand to entirely new parties through Defendant Big Mac Entertainment, LLC.”
The suit goes on to say that Clivillés and Cole’s estate made a formal estate settlement aggreement that gave Clivillés exclusive use of the C+C Music Factory name. But in 2005, it says, Williams registered “C and C Music Factory” as a trademark, which was canceled in 2012. In 2024, he filed a new trademark application for “C&C Music Factory,” and “as part of his application, Williams affirmed falsely and knowingly that he was the owner of the mark and that no other persons had the right to use the mark in commerce.” Williams was granted the registration in 2015.
If that’s the case, observers may wonder, why is Clivillés only objecting now? He says he did, in 2016, filing a petition to cancel Williams’ registration. He says it failed to proceed because of a legal error made by his former lawyers, noting that “the proceeding was dismissed with prejudice on June 25, 2018 solely due to Plaintiff’s prior counsel’s failure to file a trial brief. No tribunal has ever adjudicated the substance of Plaintiff’s cancellation claims on the merits.” Clivillés does not explain in the suit whether he ever took any further action after 2018 to try to stop Williams from using the name.
Clivillés does say he was open to a compromise: “When Plaintiff first became aware that Williams was performing under the C+C Music Factory name, Plaintiff asked WIlliams to bill himself as ‘Freedom Williams formerly of C+C Music Factory. Williams complied briefly before resuming his infringing conduct.”
In late May, shortly after Morris Day and Young MC gave public notice that they were dropping out of the Trump-approved Freedom 250 concert series, Williams — who had booked the gig under the name C+C Music Factory — posted his angry, attention-getting video about his mixed feelings about whether to stay on the bill or not, indicating that he was leaning toward going ahead. As further artists dropped out and the series fell apart, Williams never did make a subsequent declaration about whether he wanted to go on with the show or not.
Williams said he had been getting upset texts all day and was still catching up. “[N-words] talking about, ‘Yo, Free, you doing the Trump Freedom show?’… I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’ … Celebrity [n-words] is calling me up, [N-words] I’ve known for years who know I don’t fuck with Trump. … My agent called me about three months ago and said, ‘Yo, you wanna do a show the 25th? In Washington?’” he said today he went back to his agent and said, “‘You didn’t say nothing about Trump. You didn’t mention Trump.’ … So I told my agent, ‘Yeah, no, I ain’t gonna be able to do that.’”
But then there was a twist in Williams’ thinking, as the eight-minute bathroom rant continued. “I don’t give a fuck about Trump,” he said. “I know the type of fucking anarchy he creates. But the day I let you motherfuckers tell me what to do is the day I die. I want to make that shit motherfucking crystal clear… Listen, I will vote for fucking Genghis Khan, Hitler and motherfucking Ivan the Terrible before I let you [N-words] tell me what to motherfucking do… Y’all can suck my dick with that ‘Don’t do a show for Trump’ shit. I don’t give a fuck about Trump, but I also don’t give a fuck about you either! … Shit, you keep pushing me, I’ll do the motherfucking show in North Korea pissing on a fucking American flag, smoking a Cuban cigar, drinking Venezuelan wine, playing golf with motherfucking Kim Jong-il with an Iranian bitch on my lap while Trump’s standing there with his dick in his hand. That’s how much of a fuck I give what you [n-words] think! You can’t cancel me, pussy, because you don’t exist.” Williams summed up his position by saying, “I might do the motherfucking show,” then ended the video by giving the camera the finger.
