Hip-hop mogul Jay-Z filed a defamation lawsuit Monday against the woman who alleged in a now-withdrawn complaint that he and Sean “Diddy” Combs raped her when she was 13, arguing the woman had made false and defamatory statements about him for financial gain.
Jay-Z also said in the lawsuit that the woman and the lawyers who filed her complaint, Tony Buzbee and David Fortney, “were soullessly motivated by greed, in abject disregard of the truth and the most fundamental precepts of human decency.”
The lawyers and Buzbee’s law firm were also named as defendants in the lawsuit filed in federal court for the Southern District of Alabama, where the woman referred to in the lawsuit as “Jane Doe” lives. Jay-Z, whose legal name is Shawn Carter, alleges they collectively caused harm to his personal and professional reputation.
The woman withdrew her lawsuit last month with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled. She had added Jay-Z as a defendant in December, two months after the suit was filed against Combs in federal court in New York City.
In the lawsuit, she alleged the two men raped her in 2000 when she was 13 at an MTV Video Music Awards after-party in Manhattan. She said a limo driver for Combs offered her a ride to the party at a private residence.
Jay-Z’s lawsuit cites inconsistencies in the woman’s account that were reported by NBC News.
She had said that after the alleged assault, she fled the house and called her father for a ride home from a gas station. But her father said in an interview with NBC News that he didn’t recall making the more than five-hour drive from Rochester, New York, where they lived at the time, to pick her up.
The woman also said in her interview with NBC News that she had spoken to the musician Benji Madden at the party, but a representative for Madden said that neither Benji nor his brother Joel attended the 2000 VMAs and that they were on tour in the Midwest at the time. The brothers were not accused of any wrongdoing.
In addition, images from that evening show Jay-Z and Combs at a different location from the one the woman described, although their whereabouts for the entire evening are unclear.
Buzbee has filed more than 30 lawsuits on behalf of men and women accusing Combs of sexual abuse. Combs is in a Brooklyn jail awaiting a trial in May on sex trafficking and racketeering charges. He has pleaded not guilty.
After the woman’s suit was withdrawn, his attorneys said they were vindicated.
“Sean Combs has never sexually assaulted or trafficked anyone — man or woman, adult or minor,” they said in a statement. “No number of lawsuits, sensationalized allegations, or media theatrics will change that reality.”
When NBC News presented her with the inconsistencies in December, the woman said, “I have made some mistakes” in recollections of that night, but she said she stood by her allegations overall.
But Jay-Z vehemently denied them from the beginning.
“The fictional tale they created was laughable, if not for the seriousness of the claims,” he said after the woman’s complaint was dismissed. “I would not wish this experience on anyone. The trauma that my wife, my children, my loved ones and I have endured can never be dismissed.”
His lawsuit claims, “Defendants’ initiation and continued prosecution of the frivolous lawsuit was willful and malicious and was intended to oppress and cause injury to Mr. Carter.”
The suit alleges the woman has admitted that he did not assault her and that Buzbee “pushed her to go forward with the false narrative of the assault” “to leverage a maximum payday.”
It also claims that a day before the woman’s suit was withdrawn, Fortney told her that her case against Jay-Z had to be dismissed because he had made threats against her life “and it was too dangerous to continue with the case,” which Jay-Z’s attorneys deny in the suit.
Jay-Z is seeking a jury trial and unspecified damages.
Attempts to reach the woman for comment Monday were unsuccessful, and Buzbee and Fortney did not immediately reply to requests for comment on the allegations in Jay-Z’s lawsuit.