The woman who accused Jay-Z and Sean “Diddy” Combs of raping her as a teenager stated that Jay-Z did not assault her and claimed her lawyer pushed her to sue him on a recording obtained by ABC News.
In an excerpt of the recording, two private investigators working for Jay-Z reportedly asked her, “He was just there, but he didn’t have anything to do with any sexual acts towards you?”
She responded, “Yeah.”
The woman, who has since dropped her case against both Jay-Z and Combs, then told the investigators that her lawyer, Tony Buzbee, pushed her to sue the rapper.
“He was the one that kind of pushed me towards going forward with him, with Jay-Z,” the woman, who is identified as Jane Doe, is reportedly heard saying.
“Buzbee did?” the investigators confirmed, to which Jane Doe replied: “Yeah.”
The recording appears to support Jay-Z’s allegations in his defamation lawsuit filed last week that Jane Doe “voluntarily admitted” to being pressured into making false accusations. He is suing Jane Doe, Buzbee, and the lawyer’s co-counsel for orchestrating the allegations against him.
However, in court documents Jane Doe filed in a separate case in California on March 3, she denied telling the investigators that Buzbee encouraged her to pursue false claims against the rapper, whose legal name is Shawn Carter.
She said she felt “intimidated and terrified at being confronted” by the investigators at her home.
Buzbee, who called the claims that he pushed Jane Doe to sue Jay-Z a “blatant lie,” told the Daily Beast in a statement the investigators “tormented and harassed and tricked” the woman, taking her words out of context.
“The tape is a pieced together fabrication,” he said.
In contrast, Jay-Z’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, has claimed that Jane Doe “voluntarily” met and spoke with the investigators.
“She says in no uncertain terms Mr. Carter did not do this. It’s effectively a lie and the only reason Mr. Carter is even involved in this is because she was pushed to involve him,” Spiro told ABC News.
But in the California court filings, Jane Doe said she still stands by her claims and stated that she dropped her lawsuit due to “fear of intimidation and retaliation from Jay-Z and/or his associates or fans.”
After initially filing the lawsuit against Combs in October last year, Jane Doe added Jay-Z’s name in December, alleging that the men raped her at an MTV Video Music Awards afterparty in 2000, when she was 13. She dropped the lawsuit in February.
