Jay-Z Sues His Rape Accuser After She Dropped Her Case

Rapper Jay-Z has filed a lawsuit against the woman who accused him and Sean “Diddy” Combs of raping her as a teen. The Jane Doe voluntarily dismissed her complaint last month, and now, Jay-Z — whose given name is Shawn Carter — claims she and her lawyers orchestrated an “evil conspiracy” that was “soullessly motivated by greed,” according to Deadline. The Cut has contacted Carter’s attorney for comment.

“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,” the court documents reportedly state. They were filed on Monday in federal court in the Southern District of Alabama and name Doe alongside attorneys Tony Buzbee and David Fortney. Doe is an Alabama resident.

In a statement to the Cut, Buzbee — who is representing about two dozen of Combs’s accusers and has threatened up to 300 lawsuits against the disgraced mogul — said Carter’s claim was “full of lies.”

“Jane Doe affirmed as late as yesterday that she stands by her claims,” he said. “Jane Doe has been harassed and threatened, but she has never wavered and certainly has never recanted. The case filed against her includes multiple false claims, all designed to get a headline. We will address it in due course and will not allow her to be bullied or intimidated.”

In October, Doe accused Combs and two then-unnamed celebrities of raping her at an MTV Video Music Awards after-party in 2000, when she was 13 years old. In the since-dropped complaint, she said she felt “woozy and lightheaded” after sipping the drink that was offered to her and found an empty bedroom where she could lie down. Shortly thereafter, Doe claimed, Combs burst in with a man and woman in tow and told her she looked “ready to party.” While the woman watched, the lawsuit alleged, the unnamed famous man held Doe down and raped her, followed by Combs.

In a statement, Combs’s attorneys insisted their client had “never sexually assaulted anyone — adult or minor, man or woman.” But by December, Doe had amended her complaint, naming Carter as Combs’s alleged accomplice. She also recounted the alleged assault to NBC News, acknowledging that while there had been some inconsistencies in her account, she stood by the central allegations.

For his part, Carter immediately denied any involvement. In a statement posted to the X account for his entertainment company, Roc Nation, he called Buzbee a “fraud” and said Doe’s allegations were “heinous in nature.” He also quickly hit back, filing to have Doe’s case dismissed and lobbying a judge to make her name public. When Doe dropped the matter on February 14, Carter seemed to foreshadow the possibility of further action to come, writing on Roc Nation’s X: “The trauma that my wife, my children, loved ones and I have endured can never be dismissed.”

Deadline reported that in his complaint, Carter accuses Doe and her attorneys of malicious prosecution and defamation, arguing that Roc Nation lost $20 million thanks to the purported reputational smear. The complaint reportedly states that Doe “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.”

Carter was already suing Buzbee in California for what he has deemed “naked extortion” and defamation before filing this lawsuit. In a hearing late last month, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mark H. Epstein seemed to be leaning toward dropping the extortion allegations but allowing a defamation case to move forward, according to Deadline. An official ruling is still forthcoming.