Woman who accused Jay-Z of rape recants her account

Two years ago, an anonymous woman made a horrifying accusation against Jay-Z, claiming in court papers that he, along with Sean Combs, had raped her when she was 13 years old.

The two men strongly denied the accusation, and the woman withdrew her lawsuit. But Jay-Z has never let the matter go and has aggressively pursued the woman’s lawyers in court, accusing them of defamation and malicious prosecution.

Now Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, has obtained the woman’s sworn declaration, filed in court late Thursday, in which she fully recants her story, saying she that had never met Jay-Z and that he and Combs had never raped her.

In her 11-page statement, the woman, whose name was redacted, said her allegation — that Jay-Z and Combs assaulted her in September 2000 at an after-party for the MTV Video Music Awards in New York City — was false. Her lawyers at the time, she added, had filed the case “without conducting any independent investigation, background inquiry, or due diligence, and without obtaining any corroboration of the allegations.”

The declaration was submitted by lawyers for Jay-Z as part of a suit in federal court in New York that the rapper filed against the woman — identified in papers only as Jane Doe — and the lawyers who had handled her case, including Tony Buzbee, a high-profile litigator from Houston. In the Thursday filing, Jay-Z’s lawyers said they were dismissing their case against the woman.

In an email Friday morning, Buzbee defended the protocols that had been used by his firm.

“Her case was referred to our firm by another law firm along with the intake information they gathered,” he wrote. “She gave the same detailed story to four lawyers before she met with me. We hired a former major crimes police detective to vet her facts.”

The woman’s suit was one of about 40 that Buzbee filed against Combs after his arrest in September 2024 on federal charges including sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy. Combs was acquitted of those charges but convicted of two lesser prostitution-related offenses. He is currently serving out a 50-month sentence at a prison in New Jersey.

Some of the cases Buzbee filed against Combs came to his firm through a legal services company that operated a 1-800 number and ran ads on social media with lines like, “If you’ve been impacted by P Diddy’s actions, now is the time to share your story.”

In her declaration, the woman said she had seen such an ad, and it “triggered memories of being raped when I was 13 years old.” She filled out an online form and said she spoke to someone at an affiliated law firm about attending an after-party for the Teen Choice Awards in 2000.

Within weeks, the woman said in her declaration, a lawsuit had been filed on her behalf, though she said she was never shown a draft. It contained a detailed account of being driven in Combs’ limousine to “a large white house.” There, her lawsuit claimed, she drank something that made her feel “woozy and lightheaded,” and was raped by Combs and an unnamed male celebrity while a female celebrity watched.

In December 2024, the suit was amended to identify Jay-Z as the other man.

In a statement at the time, Jay-Z called the accusations “idiotic.” He said his lawyers had received a demand letter from Buzbee seeking to settle the case, which the rapper called a “blackmail attempt.”

“It made me want to expose you for the fraud you are in a VERY public fashion,” Jay-Z wrote in his statement.

Days later, the woman, with her identity shielded, gave an interview to NBC News, which found inconsistencies in her account. She said, for example, that she had called her father after the attack to take her back to Rochester, New York, a five-hour drive from Manhattan. But her father told NBC he had no recollection of the incident.

Two months after that interview, in February 2025, the woman withdrew her suit.

Jay-Z has filed two suits against Buzbee, his firm, and other lawyers associated with the case, along with Jane Doe.

As part of a suit filed in California in 2024, Jay-Z’s lawyers said a public record search would have shown that the woman had a “legally documented history of mental health issues.”

But that case was dismissed, and this month an appeal was denied. The appeals court upheld the lower court’s finding that Buzbee did not act with actual malice when referring to the woman as a “sexual assault survivor.”

“The record contains no evidence Buzbee accused Carter of raping Jane Doe while knowing those statements to be false or with reckless disregard as to whether they were true,” the judges wrote.

Last year, Jay-Z filed another case, now on the docket of U.S. District Court in Manhattan, that listed several defendants, including Buzbee and Jane Doe. That case alleges malicious prosecution.

In her statement Thursday, the woman said she was speaking out “voluntarily and on my own free will.”