The Jane Doe who accused Jay-Z of sexual assault in a startling lawsuit two years ago has now fully recanted her allegations, saying in a new court declaration that her claims were false, that she never met the Roc Nation mogul, and that she had disclosed
certain “mental health conditions” to her legal team before they publicly named the Grammy-winning rapper in her lawsuit in December 2024.
“Shawn ‘Jay-Z’ Carter never raped me. I have never met or spoken to Mr. Carter. Mr. Carter never engaged in any inappropriate conduct toward me whatsoever,” the woman wrote in the 12-page declaration filed in Manhattan federal court and obtained by Rolling Stone.
“There is no truth to any of my claims against Mr. Carter,” she continued under penalty of perjury. “I understand my false accusations have caused Mr. Carter immense pain, suffering, and damage that can never be fully undone.”
The lengthy declaration was filed Thursday along with a notice that Carter was voluntarily dismissing the woman as a defendant in his ongoing malicious-prosecution lawsuit against prominent lawyer Tony Buzbee and his Texas-based law firm. The Jane Doe said she was not promised and did not receive any compensation for the declaration.
“Our client maintains that she was a victim of sexual assault, but she was entirely mistaken in her allegations identifying Mr. Carter, and those allegations were false,” Jane Doe’s new lawyer in the malicious prosecution case, James Blair Newman, Jr., said in a statement. “Mr. Carter did not rape her, sexually assault her, engage in any inappropriate conduct towards her, and she has never met him. She sincerely and unconditionally apologizes to Mr. Carter and his family.”
The new declaration and dismissal filings came more than a year after Carter first sued the woman and her lawyers in federal court. He accused them of conspiring to pressure him into a secret financial settlement “under the threat of devastating harm to his reputation.”
Carter’s federal court lawsuit was a response to a different lawsuit first filed by the woman in October 2024 that accused Sean “Diddy” Combs of raping her when she was 13 and alleged that an unidentified “male celebrity” also sexually assaulted her. In his filings, Carter has claimed Buzbee sent him an “extortionate demand letter” in November 2024, and, after he refused to pay, amended the lawsuit in December 2024 to identify Carter as the previously unnamed celebrity defendant.
Carter vehemently denied the rape allegation when it became public and revealed he already had sued Buzbee for extortion in California state court in November 2024 using a John Doe pseudonym. In a sworn declaration, he said the demand letter felt like an “existential threat.”
“I felt that Mr. Buzbee was placing a gun to my head that I either bow to his demands or endure personal and financial ruin. His actions caused me mental anguish about the ticking time bomb and what it would do to me, my family, and my hard-earned reputation,” Carter wrote.
Jane Doe went on to voluntarily dismiss her entire complaint against Carter and Combs in early 2025, admitting there were inconsistencies in her story. A judge later dismissed Carter’s Caliifornia-based extortion lawsuit. An appeals court recently upheld that dismissal, finding that Buzbee’s demand letter was protected because it was sent in anticipation of filing a lawsuit.
“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. To the contrary, Buzbee submitted declarations showing his firm’s and [a referral firm’s] investigations led him to subjectively believe in the truth of the accusations,” Associate Justice Anne Richardson wrote in the unanimous ruling from California’s Second Appellate District earlier this month.
The California ruling leaves Carter’s malicious-prosecution lawsuit in New York as his remaining case against Buzbee and his firm. Carter alleges they should have known before filing the Jane Doe lawsuit that her claims “were contradicted by publicly available information, internally inconsistent, and unsupported by any credible story or investigation.”
Reached by email late Thursday, Buzbee said he had not seen Jane Doe’s new declaration. “We have multiple lawyers (at least four) who dealt with Ms. Doe long before she met me. She gave the exact same story to each. If for some reason now she is claiming she lied to us and the court, that’s new information,” he wrote. He previously told Rolling Stone that “sending a basic demand letter prior to filing suit is not and will never be ‘extortion.’”
In her new declaration, the Jane Doe said her legal claim started when she responded to a Facebook ad in late September or early October 2024 looking for people with sexual assault claims against Sean Combs.
“The ad triggered memories of being raped when I was 13 years old,” she claimed in the new filing. She said she clicked on the ad, filled out a form, and received a call asking for more information. She recalled stating during the call that she was a model who attended an afterparty following the Teen Choice Awards in 2000 in New York City. Her lawsuit later claimed the show was the MTV Video Music Awards.
The woman said that her initial October 2024 lawsuit against Combs was filed without her knowledge and without her lawyers “conducting any independent investigation, background inquiry, or due diligence.” She further alleged she was given $1,200 in cash by her lawyers when she traveled to Houston in December 2024 for an interview with NBC News. She said her lawyers asked her to take a polygraph test after the news interview due to discrepancies in her story. She never received the results of the test, she claimed
“In January 2025, I began to doubt my claims against Mr. Carter. I also began doubting that I ever went to a party with celebrities,” she wrote. After she expressed the doubts to her lawyers, they let her know they were dismissing her lawsuit, she claimed.
In his email to Rolling Stone, Buzbee said he believed Jane Doe received “some petty cash” for meals and travel expenses. “With respect to court filings, each was explained in detail to Ms. Doe, to include the original demand letter. She has previously acknowledged that,” he wrote.
In a Sept. 1 motion to dismiss Carter’s malicious-prosecution claims, Buzbee and his co-counsel called the lawsuit “improper” and “abusive.” They argued that filing a civil complaint on behalf of a Jane Doe alleging sexual assault did not amount to misconduct and that inconsistencies in the woman’s recollection were not necessarily suspicious, particularly given her claim that she had been drugged and raped more than two decades earlier, when she was 13.
“This case is itself a malicious prosecution,” they argued, referring to Carter’s lawsuit.
Combs’ lawyers separately denied the woman’s allegations, saying he “never sexually assaulted or trafficked anyone — man or woman, adult or minor.” Buzbee, meanwhile, continues to represent other plaintiffs pursuing civil claims against Combs.
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