Photo Credit: Jay-Z by Mikael ‘Mika’ Väisänen / CC by 3.0
Jay-Z’s rape accuser submits another court filing in response to his countersuit, doubling down on her story after dropping her suit against him.
After the anonymous Jane Doe accusing Jay-Z of raping her at an afterparty in 2000 dropped her lawsuit against him, the music mogul filed a countersuit. His suit alleges that she and her lawyer, Tony Buzbee, fabricated the sexual assault allegations to secure a bigger payday. But now, Jane Doe is firing back with court filings asserting she stands by her story, even though she chose not to pursue legal action.
Jane Doe’s recent filing directly contradicts the defamation countersuit from Jay-Z’s legal team, which claims she admitted to fabricating her story. On Monday, the unnamed Jane Doe stated in Los Angeles court filings that she had flatly refused to recant her story when approached last month by investigators on behalf of Jay-Z. She says the experience left her “intimidated and terrified.”
“Although I ultimately chose not to pursue them, I stand by my claims in the New York action and believe that I had meritorious claim against Jay-Z,” she wrote in her filing on Monday, March 3. “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.”
She also stressed that her attorney, Buzbee, had not sought her out nor pushed her to add Jay-Z (real name Shawn Carter) to her allegations. “I told them that neither of those things ever happened, and I asked them to leave me alone.”
In response, Carter’s lawyers were quick to file new court documents on Wednesday, offering sworn statements from the private investigators who allegedly talked to her. The new filings ask the judge for permission to add them to the case record.
“Jane Doe stated to me that Mr. Carter did not sexually assault her,” said one of the investigators in a sworn statement. “Jane Doe stated, ‘Buzbee brought Jay-Z into it,’ and ‘he was the one that kind of pushed me towards going forward with him,’” the same investigator adds.
Another investigator said Jane Doe told him that “lawyers at Mr. Buzbee’s law firm told her that, if she pursued Mr. Carter, she would get a payout.”
Carter’s lawyers also request that the judge permit them to depose both Jane Doe 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.”
Depositions are normally conducted during the discovery phase as a case moves toward trial, so such a request is unusual. That said, Carter’s lawyers insist Jane Doe’s filings have invited such a request, and that the rapper is “entitled to find out” the truth.
Buzbee vehemently denied the claims against him and his client by Carter’s investigators in the recent filings. “Jane Doe’s case was signed up in October by another law firm to pursue allegations against Jay-Z and P. Diddy,” Buzbee explains. “After it was vetted, it was sent to my firm weeks later. […] The allegation that I sat with Jane Doe and suggested a suit against Jay-Z is not only a lie, it’s provably and demonstrably false, and is contrary to the documentation from referring counsel’s intake process and our own firm documents.”
Jay-Z has strongly denied Jane Doe’s claims against him, calling the whole thing a “blackmail attempt.” He has accused Buzbee of trying to extort settlements from himself and other celebrities by falsely tying them to Sean “Diddy” Combs as a flurry of civil lawsuits swirl around the latter. Combs remains in custody in New York, awaiting trial on federal charges.
