genre hiphop

Jay-Z’s rape accuser says in court filings that she stands by her story, directly contradicting his recent lawsuit that claims she admitted to fabricating the allegations — prompting the star’s lawyers to offer testimony from private investigators and demand that the accuser sit for a deposition.

In Los Angeles court filings Monday (March 3), the unnamed Jane Doe stated that she had flatly refused to recant her story when approached last month by investigators for Jay-Z — an experience she said left her “intimidated and terrified.” She also denied that her attorney, Tony Buzbee, had pushed her to sue.

Those statements, which Doe made in a sworn affidavit, directly contradicted allegations leveled by Jay-Z (Shawn Carter) in a separate lawsuit filed earlier on Monday. In that case, he claimed Doe had “voluntarily admitted” directly to his team that her now-dropped lawsuit was premised on a false accusation.

“Although I ultimately chose not to pursue them, I stand by my claims in the New York action and believe that I had a meritorious claim against Jay-Z,” the woman wrote in Monday’s filing. “I ultimately decided to dismiss the [case] because I was frightened by the reaction of Jay-Z and his supporters, and the likelihood that I would have to be publicly named and subjected to public attacks.”

In the same sworn statement, the unnamed woman stressed that Buzbee had not sought her out, nor had he urged her to add Jay-Z to her allegations: “I told them that neither of those things ever happened, and I asked them to leave me alone.”

Monday’s statement from Doe quickly prompted a response from Jay-Z’s lawyers. In a flurry of new filings on Wednesday (March 5), they offered up sworn statements from the actual private investigators who allegedly talked to her, asking the judge for permission to add them to the case record.

In those statements, one of the investigators said, “Jane Doe stated to me that Mr. Carter did not sexually assault her.” At another point, the same investigator added: “Jane Doe stated ‘Buzbee brought Jay Z into it,’ and ‘he was the one that kind of pushed me towards going forward with him.’” Another investigator said Doe had told him that “lawyers at Mr. Buzbee’s law firm told her that, if she pursued Mr. Carter, she would get a payout.”

In the same filings, Jay-Z’s lawyers also made an alternative request: that the judge permit them to depose both the accuser and Buzbee under oath. “The new declaration only further reinforces the need for Jane Doe and Mr. Buzbee to sit for a deposition regarding their conversations, including her conversations with his colleagues who convinced Jane Doe to drop her lawsuit,” they wrote.

Depositions are not typically granted at the outset of such a case; instead, they are conducted during the later “discovery” phase as a case moves toward trial. But Jay-Z’s lawyers say Doe’s filing has opened the door to those issues and that the rapper is now “entitled to find out” what the woman knows.

In a detailed statement to Billboard on Wednesday, Buzbee strongly denied the various claims advanced by Jay-Z’s investigators in the new court filings. He said he believes they “flat out made all of this up” and that he “can’t wait to see what they have been paid and who is paying them.”

“Jane Doe’s case was signed up in October by another law firm to pursue allegations against Jay-Z and P. Diddy. Apparently it came in through Facebook to that firm’s page. After it was vetted it was sent to my firm weeks later,” Buzbee said. “The allegation that I sat with Jane Doe and suggested a suit against Jay-Z is not only a lie, it’s proveably and demonstrably false and is contrary to the documentation from referring counsel’s intake process and our own firm documents.”

The blockbuster case against Jay-Z, filed in December, claimed that he and Sean “Diddy” Combs drugged and raped a 13-year-old girl at an after-party following the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards. It represented a shocking expansion of the already-sprawling claims against Combs and came amid speculation that other stars might be implicated in Diddy’s alleged decades of abusive behavior.

Jay-Z forcefully denied the allegations, calling them a “blackmail attempt.” He accused Buzbee of trying to extort settlements from innocent celebrities by falsely tying them to Diddy and vowed to fight back and never pay his accuser.

Last month, Doe abruptly dropped the case — without explanation and without any kind of payment from Jay-Z. Two weeks later, Jay-Z sued both Doe and Buzbee for defamation, malicious prosecution and other wrongdoing, claiming they had carried out an “evil conspiracy” to extort a settlement from him by making the “false and malicious” rape allegations.

“Mr. Carter does not commence this action lightly,” his lawyers wrote in Monday’s lawsuit. “But the extortion and abuse of Mr. Carter by Doe and her lawyers must stop.”

The recent filing from Doe rebutting those allegations, also filed Monday, was lodged in a separate lawsuit in California in which Jay-Z is suing Buzbee for extortion and defamation over the same rape allegations. At a hearing in that case last week, a Los Angeles judge said he would likely dismiss the star’s extortion claims but likely allow the defamation claims against the lawyer to proceed.