Attorneys for Jay-Z on Wednesday asked a Manhattan judge to address “unsupported allegations” that he raped a 13-year-old girl with Sean “Diddy” Combs and expedite his removal from the case.
Alex Spiro, a lawyer for the Brooklyn-born billionaire whose real name is Shawn Carter, has asked a federal judge to dismiss the suit. In new court filings, he said admissions by the unnamed accuser and her father in a recent NBC special “cast yet further doubt on a claim that was obviously false from the start.”
“Plaintiff’s unsupported allegations crumble under scrutiny, as the evidence — and lack thereof — reveals glaring inconsistencies and outright impossibilities in her story,” Spiro wrote. “These allegations have caused incalculable harm to Mr. Carter, his family, his businesses, his employees, and his legacy.”
The Alabama woman, who is now 38, accused Carter of the assault earlier this month in a pending lawsuit against Combs, who separately appeared in court Wednesday in his criminal sex trafficking case.
The woman’s suit alleges the incident occurred at an MTV Video Music Awards after-party hosted by Combs in 2000 after she got a ride to the event from the award ceremony from a limo driver associated with Combs who said she “fit what Diddy was looking for.”
In graphic detail, the filing alleged that she was in a room with Combs and Carter at the after-party. It alleges Combs threw her toward a wall and then onto a bed and that Carter then removed her clothes and began raping her while Combs and an unnamed female celebrity watched.
The suit alleges Combs then raped her and that she ultimately escaped after he tried to force her to perform oral sex. Both men deny the allegations.
During her NBC interview on Friday, the woman acknowledged some inconsistencies in her account but said she stood by it. She had said her father picked her up from the party for a five-hour journey home, which he told the outlet he didn’t recall, and that she had spoken to Benji Madden from the band Good Charlotte, who has said he was touring in another state.
In his Wednesday filing, Spiro, who represents Mayor Adams in his unrelated criminal case, said the discrepancies “highlight severe misconduct” by the woman’s Houston-based attorney, Tony Buzbee, who is representing a slate of accusers in suits against Combs. After the interview aired, he said he would further vet her claims.
“The fundamental inconsistencies in Plaintiff’s case revealed in the NBC interview, coupled with Buzbee’s chronic inability to follow the rules in this case and others, creates a substantial risk that Buzbee will destroy evidence damaging to Plaintiff’s case, including evidence of his own misconduct, impairing the integrity of the judicial process,” Spiro wrote.
Buzbee did not respond to requests for comment.
Manhattan Federal Judge Analisa Torres will rule on Spiro’s requests.
Combs has been awaiting trial at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Centre since his September arrest on sweeping sex trafficking charges that carry a potential decades-long sentence. Multiple attempts by his legal team to get him released to house arrest on a $50 million bond have failed.
At a brief court hearing in his criminal case Wednesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson said prosecutors were on track to produce all discovery to his team by the end of the year, including “many large electronic files.” She declined to shed light on a possible superseding indictment but said, “any additional charges likely will have minimal additional discovery, if any.”
The Bad Boy Records founder has pleaded not guilty to racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and interstate transportation to engage in prostitution in the case, alleging he used his business empire as a means to sexually abuse and coerce women into violent sexual performances dubbed “freak offs.”
The feds say he often drugged his victims and recorded the abuse sessions for blackmail purposes and that he and his associates committed forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, and obstruction of justice.
Parallel to the criminal case, Combs has been sued in nearly 40 civil cases, levying similar claims of sexual misconduct. Last week, three anonymous men were the most recent to bring allegations in separate Manhattan Supreme Court suits alleging he drugged and raped them, in some instances with other people, between 2006 and 2022. He denies all allegations.
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