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The family of the late singer-songwriter Isaac Hayes filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump and his campaign team on Friday, potentially seeking millions of dollars in damages for the alleged unauthorized use of the song “Hold On, I’m Coming” at the former president’s rallies and campaign videos.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Georgia, also names the Republican National Committee and the conservative activist group Turning Point USA.
Lawyers for the Hayes family argue that Trump owes the estate $150,000 for each alleged unauthorized use of the song, which the Trump campaign allegedly used over 100 times.
In addition to the royalties, a disclaimer is required stating that the Executor has not authorized, endorsed or permitted the use of Isaac Hayes Enterprises’ property at any time or in perpetuity throughout the world.
The Independent has reached out to the Trump campaign, the RNC and Turning Point USA for comment.
Hayes died on August 10, 2008. He co-wrote the song in question with David Porter and it was first performed by the duo Sam & Dave in 1966.
Hayes’ estate argues that it regained the copyright to “Hold On, I’m Coming” in 2022 and that the Trump campaign continued to use the song without permission.
According to a post on X by Hayes’ son, Isaac Hayes III, the family sent Trump and his campaign a copyright infringement notice on August 11, demanding $3 million in royalties.
“It has come to our attention that you or the campaign have authorized the illegal public performance of the song on multiple occasions during various rallies for your political campaign without permission from the copyright owner, despite our client’s repeated requests that you not engage in such illegal use,” said a letter from Hayes’ attorney James Walker.
The alleged unauthorized uses of the song spanned the period from 2022 to 2024, the letter said.
Walker demanded that Trump and his campaign stop using “Hold On, I’m Coming” and remove all videos featuring the song by August 16.
The estate argued that the $3 million royalty fee “is a very low price than the normal royalty fee for so many multiple uses. The normal fee for these infringements will be ten times as much if we sue, starting at $150,000 per use.”
The Aug. 11 letter came more than a week after Hayes III posted that the Trump campaign used the song at its Atlanta rally without the family’s consent.
He wrote that his family is “taking legal action to stop the unauthorized use of this song. Donald Trump embodies honesty, integrity and class at its worst and (the family does not want) to be associated with his campaign of hate and racism.”
On August 10, the anniversary of Hayes’ death, his son wrote that Trump, the RNC and his representatives “used the song in Montana” despite “multiple” requests not to use it. Trump spoke at a rally in Bozeman, Montana, earlier this month, where he bizarrely claimed that no one knew Vice President Kamala Harris’s last name.
Porter, who co-wrote the song with Hayes, said The Independent last month: “I can say that I do not want my songs to be used for political campaigns,” the 82-year-old added: “Certainly not this one … We make music to lift people up, not to divide them.”
This is not the first time that Trump has drawn the ire of musicians.
This month, Céline Dion’s X-Account wrote that her management team had “become aware of the unauthorized use of the video, recording, musical performance and image of Céline Dion singing ‘My Heart Will Go On’ at a Donald Trump/JD Vance campaign rally in Montana.”
In January, after former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr discovered that his band’s 1984 song “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want” was played at a Trump rally, he wrote on X: “Ahh… right… OK. Never in a million years thought this could happen. Consider this crap ended immediately.”
