Taylor Swift might not have a case against the college student who has been tracking the whereabouts of her private jet.
“Really, there’s no claim here,” Neama Rahmani, who is not directly involved with Swift or the student, told Us Weekly exclusively on Wednesday, February 21. “Her lawyers fired off a letter and that’s what lawyers do. But I’m not surprised that the response was what it’s, this is public information, so there’s nothing that she can do.”
Jack Sweeney, who runs the Instagram account @taylorswiftjets, received a cease and desist letter from Swift’s team threatening legal action earlier this month. Sweeney shared a reply from his attorney via X on Monday, February 19. In the legal letter, Sweeney’s attorney claimed that the Instagram account uses only “publicly available information,” therefore it “poses no threat.”
Rahmani told Us that he was “not surprised” by the response. “This is public information, so there’s nothing that she can do,” he added. Going forward, Rahmani does not think that Swift or her legal team will take any further action.
“This has already gotten some bad publicity for her, and I think this was more of a strongly-worded letter than a lawsuit or anything like that,” he explained. “She did talk about stalking, but it’s really a bridge too far to say that posting publicly available information or compiling it or tweeting about it. … It’s just not enough.”
Rahmani also speculated to Us that Sweeney’s response letter “will end the matter” entirely.
“I get it. It’s annoying, it’s frustrating, but it’s not legally actionable,” he said. “I fully expect that this is probably the last we’ll hear about it. I don’t expect Taylor to file a lawsuit over this because it would be a loser.”
In her original cease and desist, Swift referred to Sweeney’s Instagram account as “stalking and harassing behavior,” threatening to “pursue any and all legal remedies” if the 21-year-old continued to post about her jet’s whereabouts. (Swift, 34, has experienced stalking incidents in the past.)
“While this may be a game to you, or an avenue that you hope will earn you wealth or fame, it is a life-or-death matter for our Client,” Swift’s attorney Katie Wright Morrone wrote in the cease and desist, obtained by The Washington Post earlier this month, claiming that there was “no legitimate interest in or public need for this information, other than to stalk, harass, and exert dominion and control.”
In Sweeney’s response, the college student’s attorney, James Slater, stated that “there is nothing unlawful” about the Instagram account. The information on Sweeney’s account comes from the Federal Aviation Administration and volunteers who track their own signals.
“The @taylorswiftjets account is engaged in protected speech that does not violate any of Ms. Swift’s legal rights,” Slater’s response read.