Jay-Z has filed a hard-hitting new defamation and malicious prosecution lawsuit against the Alabama-based Jane Doe who publicly accused him of a sexual assault involving Sean Combs but then later admitted inconsistencies in her story and voluntarily dismissed her lawsuit last month.
In his new lawsuit filed Monday and obtained by Rolling Stone, Jay-Z says the woman and her lawyers — Tony Buzbee and David Fortney — engaged in an “evil conspiracy” to extort him with the “completely fabricated” and “wildly horrific” claim that he raped Doe alongside Combs in 2000. The woman first revealed her claim in an October lawsuit that alleged Combs and an unidentified male celebrity took turns violently raping her at an afterparty for the MTV Video Music Awards when she was 13 years old. She filed a revised version of her lawsuit on Dec. 8, 2024, naming Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, as the male celebrity.
According to Carter’s new lawsuit, representatives for the Grammy-winning rapper made direct contact with Doe recently, and she allegedly admitted she concocted her claim about Carter and felt pressured by her legal team to repeat it during an on-camera interview with NBC News in mid-December. That NBC interview maintained Doe’s anonymity but exposed several notable discrepancies in her account. For instance, while the woman claimed she met musician Benji Madden at the same party, it turns out Madden was in another state on tour at the time. Doe’s father also disputed her claim that he picked her up in a vehicle after the alleged assault. The father said he lived far upstate at the time and would have remembered driving more than five hours to retrieve his daughter.
“Doe has now voluntarily admitted directly to representatives of Mr. Carter that the story brought before the world in court and on global television was just that: a false, malicious story,” Carter’s new lawsuit claims. “She has admitted that Mr. Carter did not assault her; and that indeed it was Buzbee himself – whom she met for the first time at a coffee shop in Houston on the day of her maliciously false NBC News interview – who pushed her to go forward with the false narrative of the assault by Mr. Carter in order to leverage a maximum payday.”
Editor’s picks
Buzbee said in a statement to Rolling Stone, “This new case which alleges the same thing as another one he pieces together and filed in Los Angeles also has no legal merit. Shawn Carter’s investigators have repeatedly harassed, threatened and harangued this poor woman for weeks trying to intimidate her and make her recant her story. She won’t. Instead she has stated repeatedly she stands by her claims. These same group of investigators have been caught on tape offering to pay people to sue me and my firm. This is just another attempt to intimidate and bully this poor woman that we will deal with in due course. We won’t be bullied or intimidated by frivolous cases.”
Attempts to reach Fortney were not immediately successful Monday. Buzbee previously denied any wrongdoing in court filings opposing separate extortion and defamation claims filed against him by Carter in Los Angeles County.
A prominent Texas lawyer who has boasted he’s collected more than $10 billion in damages for his clients, Buzbee made a splashy entrance into the fray of civil litigation against Combs last September. At a press conference streamed online, he announced he had more than 120 clients with allegedly credible claims against Combs who went through a “stringent” vetting process. He has since filed more than two dozen lawsuits against the Bad Boy Records founder who’s currently in federal custody fighting criminal charges of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking. (Combs has vehemently denied all accusations of sexual assault and criminal conduct.)
Carter’s new lawsuit repeats the allegation that Buzbee’s firm sent him an “extortionate” demand letter on Nov. 5, 2024, requesting a private mediation ahead of a planned lawsuit. Carter claims the letter threatened financial and personal devastation if he didn’t work out a deal to “silence” Doe.
Related Content
Last week, a Los Angeles judge said he was on the verge of dismissing Carter’s extortion claim against Buzbee unless Carter could produce additional evidence. It wasn’t immediately clear Monday if the alleged new statement from Doe would be admissible in that case. The California judge said Carter’s related defamation claim against Buzbee appeared strong enough to proceed toward a trial. The judge took the matter under submission, promising a ruling on Buzbee’s dismissal motion soon.
In a sworn statement filed in the Los Angeles case last month, Carter said it was no exaggeration that he viewed Buzbee’s promise to name him in the rape lawsuit as an “existential threat” to his reputation, career, and family. “I felt that Mr. Buzbee was placing a gun to my head that I either bow to his demands or endure personal and financial ruin. His actions caused me mental anguish about the ticking time bomb and what it would do to me, my family, and my hard-earned reputation,” he wrote. “It was incredibly painful for my wife and me to sit down with our children, one of whom is at an age where her friends would surely see the press and ask questions about these claims, and explain this. I mourn this loss of innocence for my children, including one who is around the age that the female minor claims to have been when she falsely claims that these heinous acts happened. I am heartbroken that my children have to endure hearing these things about their father, especially at their young age.”
Carter claimed that after Buzbee went public with the “false accusations,” his company Roc Nation lost contracts worth $20 million per year. He also questioned the timing of the amended complaint filed in early December. “I was harshly criticized by others for accompanying my daughter to the premiere of her movie (Mufasa: The Lion King) a day after Mr. Buzbee filed the Jane Doe lawsuit against me. Media outlets reported that Disney was hesitant over my attendance at the premiere because of the accusations,” Carter said. “I feel that Mr. Buzbee purposely filed this lawsuit on the eve of my daughter’s premiere to put me in the position of having to choose between supporting my daughter or hiding to avoid the negative press coverage.”
In his new lawsuit filed in federal court in Alabama, Carter again mentioned damage to his family and reputation as well as the alleged $20 million in lost business for Roc Nation. He also included claims for abuse of process and civil conspiracy and is seeking real and punitive damages with the new complaint.
“Defendants acted with malice in pursuing and initiating the meritless lawsuit against Mr. Carter,” the filing reads. “Defendants devised and executed their plan to accuse Mr. Carter of sexual assault and used national news and media outlets to disseminate the fabricated accusations to millions despite the falsity of the accusation. Defendants’ actions were willful and purposeful in order to maximize the reputational harm to Mr. Carter and induce Mr. Carter to pay them. At a minimum, they initiated the lawsuit with a reckless disregard for the falsity of the allegations.”
The new lawsuit claims Buzbee’s firm failed to adequately vet Jane Doe. Without naming her, the filing says that less than 90 days before the demand letter was issued, Doe had been in court on mental health-related issues and charged with assault in the second degree. It further alleges she “has several mental health disorders and takes multiple medications according to testimony from her psychiatrist laid bare in public court records.”
