Law&Crime Sidebar - Jay-Z Demands Judge Toss Child Rape Lawsuit, Punish Rival Attorney

Episode Date: January 9, 2025

Attorneys for rapper and businessman Jay-Z, real name Shawn Carter, have filed critical paperwork to try to get accusations against him thrown out. Texas attorney Tony Buzbee represents a woman who says she was raped in 2000 when she just 13. But Jay-Z’s legal team points out glaring holes in her story. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber breaks down the latest details.Watch Sidebar with Jesse Weber NOW on Spotify! - https://bit.ly/41thR8LHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger and Christina FalconeScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. views shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller that

will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Jay-Z has officially petitioned the court to dismiss the sexual assault lawsuit against him and also to impose sanctions upon the Texas attorney who has come after him. We're going to analyze the arguments and what can we expect next. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by law and crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Hey, so before we go any further on this, I have a big announcement for you guys.

The video version of Sidebar is now available on Spotify. That's right. We are so thankful for your guys' support of Sidebar. Us getting this show on Spotify video is just truly due to how loyal this audience is. So thank you so much for that. And yes, you can now watch and listen on the go from. Diddy to the United Healthcare murder updates to crazy court moments. It is all on Spotify. So right now, you can scan the QR code on screen or click the link in the description to follow

sidebar on Spotify. All right, we have another legal filing in the Jay-Z sexual assault case that we need to talk about. This is one that we've been following for quite some time. And we can't forget what this is about. So this is about a woman, an unidentified Jane Doe, who by the way, the court, the judge overseeing this case, has recently ruled that she can proceed anonymous as of right now. So this unidentified Jane Doe has sued both Jay-Z, Sean Carter, and Sean Diddy Combs. This is out in New York. This is out in New York federal court, to be more specific. And she is claiming that when she was just 13 years old, she was raped by both of these musicians at a video music awards after party back in 2000. And now Jay-Z, who is adamantly denying

the allegations, is not only trying to get the whole case dismissed and thrown out, but he is also asking the court to impose sanctions upon Jane Doe's Texas attorney, Tony Busby. Now, this may sound very familiar, by the way, because this has been a ongoing legal war between Busby and Jay-Z and his legal team. Accusations that Busby engaged in extortion, that his firm pressured a client to lie, that Jay-Z's camp has been engaging in intimidation and harassment. Jay-Z called Tony Busby a deplorable human being. He even filed a lawsuit against Tony Busby. And by the way, Jay-Z and his legal team, their position was that Busby had extorted the rapper, that Busby allegedly threatened Jay-Z during negotiations

that he would go public with these claims, Jay-Z says these are false claims, but public with these claims, unless Jay-Z agreed to pay what they claim is a, quote, exorbitant sum in private mediation within a two-week period. Jay-Z says that when he refused, that is when he was named by Tony Busby in the lawsuit. Remember, this lawsuit first came out. It was only identified as unnamed celebrity A, and then in an amended complaint, Jay-Z was identified as Celebrity A. So you're seeing this really bad blood between the different players here. I mean, it got so bad that the judge in this case, Judge Annalisa Torres, actually scolded Jay-Z's lawyer, Alex Spiro, writing in a recent order, Carter's lawyer's relentless filing of combative motions containing inflammatory language and

ad hominem attacks is inappropriate, a waste of judicial resources, and a tactic unlikely to benefit his client. The court will not fast track the judicial process merely because counsel demands it. Now, despite not allowing Jay-Z to immediately file for sanctions, Judge Torres did permit Jay-Z to file the motion that we're about to talk about, and this is big. So this is Jay-Z's memorandum of law in support of his motion for sanctions and dismissing the complaint. So basically, these are his legal arguments. So the filing begins right on page one. While the allegations stated in the complaint in this case are gravely serious and injurious

to Mr. Carter's hard-won reputation, many of them, on their face, strain the outer bounds of credulity, and none of them appear to have been subjected to even the most rudimentary diligence by the filing attorney who initially signed his name to them and is since declined to withdraw them. Because the federal rules and professional ethics require more of a filing attorney, Mr. Carter now respectfully seeks appropriate sanctions. And by the way, when we're talking about sanctions under Rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, we're talking about a way to punish attorneys for really bad conduct. Usually it's a monetary punishment.

It's rare. It's rare. You don't see this all the time. You have to be talking about really egregious bad behavior. You know, Rule 11, it's about making false representations to the court, filing a lawsuit, for an improper purpose, like merely to harass someone, that you're asserting claims or defenses that are not backed up by the facts, the law, the evidence. The bottom line here is that Rule 11 requires attorneys to conduct reasonable inquiries into the facts and into the law before they file. Makes sense, right?

Well, Alex Spiro, Jay-Z's attorney, claims that Tony Busby violated Rule 11 by, quote, either knowingly making false allegations about Mr. Carter and the amended complaint, failing to conduct an adequate investigation into the complaint's factual allegations or at a minimum failing to withdraw the complaint once it became clear that numerous allegations in the complaint are false and the other allegations are therefore at least highly suspect. So what do they mean by these allegations are false? Well, here is where it gets a little tricky for Jane Doe because NBC News actually interviewed her and they looked into this case.

They looked into her claims. And here's what the filing says. NBC news journalists determined that a number of allegations were either false or highly doubtful. For example, paragraph 44 of the complaint claims that the party, again, this is the party where she claimed she was assaulted, the party occurred at a large white residence with a gated U-shaped driveway that was approximately 20 minutes from the VMAs by car. But photographs show that after the VMAs, Mr. Carter attended a party at Lotus, a nightclub

in New York. And by the way, there is a photo included here provided by Alex Spiro of Jay-Z at what appears to be a party with a lot of people. Later on in the memorandum, he writes other photographs from that evening also show Mr. Combs with his then-girlfriend, the musician and actress Jennifer Lopez, at two different establishments, Lotus and Twirl, neither of which was a large residence with a U-shaped driveway. And there is another photo that is included. This time it's of the pair, Jennifer Lopez, Sean Combs, and there is a caption at the bottom that says that they are at a MTV Video Music Awards After Party at Twirl on September 7, 2000.

But that is not the only alleged inconsistency. You see, Jane Doe has claimed in her complaint that she was able to escape this situation and run away to a nearby gas station, call her father to pick her up. Well, the filing says, paragraph 60 states that after the alleged assault, plaintiff's father drove to pick her up. But her father has no recollection of doing so, despite the fact that it would have been a 10-hour drive round trip to retrieve his 13-year-old daughter from a random gas station. And yeah, that was included in the NBC report. It was a big part of it because this accuser's father told NBC, quote, I feel like I would remember that and I don't.

I have a lot going on, but I mean, that's something that would definitely stick in my mind. Now, Spiro continues in this filing saying paragraph 14. states that plaintiff spoke to celebrities at the alleged party, but when journalists pressed her as to which celebrity she spoke with, she named a person who was in Chicago that evening performing a concert. So Spiro explains a little bit more about this later on in the filing where he writes. Plaintiff also claimed with certainty that she spoke with musician Benji Madden at the alleged party about his tattoo, The Last Supper.

She supposedly remembers this interaction with clarity because she has a religious background, so it was something to talk about. But Mr. Madden was not even in the state of New York. His representative told NBC that he did not attend the VMAs and, in fact, was on tour in the Midwest with his band, Good Charlotte. Then, Spiro writes, paragraph 40 states that plaintiff watched the VMAs on a jumbotron. In fact, photographs from that evening show there was no Jumbotron, as New York City had denied MTV a permit. And included, also by Jayze's legal team, is a screenshot of, what appears to be a video, so it's a still shot from a YouTube video that is titled

2000 MTV VMA's Red Carpet, and it appears that someone is performing on an outdoor stage in New York, but from that pick, yeah, you don't see Jumbotron. Then Spiro continues, and the same paragraph says that plaintiff approached limousine drivers at the VMAs. And by the way, the allegation was there is that a limousine driver had taken her to this party. But Spiro writes, video shows that the limousine area was cordoned off. by police and inaccessible to fans and included is another screenshot of that same video from YouTube of the exterior of the radio sitting music hall where the VMAs was being held and you see limousines outside with police appearing to be on each side and there are barricades now this accuser

did concede to NBC that she has quote made some mistakes in her retelling of the story but she stands by her account saying you should always fight for what happened to you you should always advocate for yourself and be a voice for yourself. You should never let what somebody else did ruin or run your life. I just hope I can give others the strength to come forward like I came forward. But obviously, Jay-Z and Spiro disagree, right? And they say in their memorandum, confronted with those glaring red flags, a competent and ethical attorney, again talking about Tony Busby, would have not only omitted the many erroneous allegations from the complaint, but also completed a thorough and careful vetting of the core assault allegation before affixing

his or her signature to the complaint. Abiding by that ethical duty was especially important here, given the defamatory character of the assault allegation and the near certainty that the complaint would generate massive publicity in light of the identity of the defendant, inflicting irreparable reputational harm and forcing him to explain to his own children that he had been falsely accused of assaulting a child. And conducting a thorough inquiry is particularly critical, whereas here, the plaintiff has no corroborating witness for her account and claims that she did not tell a soul about the incident at any point in the last quarter century, including her father, who supposedly

picked her up. Spiro continues that a reporter was able to undercut almost all of the events of plaintiff's narrative just five days after the FAC, the first amended complaint, was filed only highlights the complete lack of investigation undertaken by her own attorneys. A simple call to her father, a view of publicly available video footage and photos from that night at and after the VMAs or a review of publicly available property records would have quickly revealed the implausibility of her allegations. But Mr. Busby has all but admitted that he declined to undertake such a basic investigation. When confronted by NBC News journalists with a series of false allegations in the complaint, Mr. Busby sought to cover for his utter lack

of diligence by claiming his client would undergo a polygraph examination, an offer he seems to have abandoned since making it weeks ago. And he passed the buck. that another unnamed firm had vetted the allegations and that the Busby law firm would, quote, continue to vet claims and collect corroborating data to the extent it exists. So, yes, that is true based on the NBC reporting. He said that. And Jay-Z argues, that's not adequate. That is, quote, entirely improper and that it was Busby's job to conduct a factual investigation

before he signed and filed this complaint, not afterwards. And Jay-Z and Alex Spiro double down on this. And they make the argument that if you look at how Tony Busby has conducted himself since Combs was arrested and indicted, it shows that Tony Busby hasn't been doing his proper due diligence. Why do they say that? Because after that happened, after Sean Combs was arrested and indicted, they say that Busby apparently published a 1-800 hotline number for potential plaintiffs to sue Sean Combs for abuse. And they say just two weeks later, he holds this press conference where he claimed that more than 3,000 people had contacted him

through the hotline and that he claimed he was representing 120 plaintiffs who wanted to bring lawsuits against Sean Combs. That is true. He did hold that presser. We covered this on prior sidebars. But they argue, quote, that sequence alone strongly suggests that Mr. Busby's vetting of claims was grossly deficient. Even assuming Mr. Busby set up the hotline on the same day that Mr. Combs' indictment was unsealed, the sheer number of calls that Mr. Busby allegedly received within the two weeks between the unsealing and the October 1st press release indicates that Mr. Busby could not possibly have vetted every caller's allegations to the extent necessary to establish the veracity before signing up 120 of them as plaintiffs.

But within weeks of his press conference and in an apparent rush to be the first attorney to get claims on file against Mr. Combs, Mr. Busby filed 15 lawsuits on behalf of individuals who contacted him via the hotline in this court alone. So the basic argument was that Busby didn't properly vet these claims, that he appears to not even spoken to the accuser's father, which would have been a simple thing to do. And when he started to see cracks in this case, he should have withdrawn the complaint. And they argue that he is not engaging in his ethical responsibilities. And they even go so far as to suggest that maybe that is why he has not obtained temporary admission to practice law in this court, the Southern District of New York, for this case. because in the law we call that Prohocquevich. That's where you're temporarily admitted to try a case

in a jurisdiction they are not otherwise admitted to. We talked about this previously on another episode of Side Bar because he was defending himself, Tony Busby in a prior filing, and he was basically saying, look, I'm not trying to avoid being sanctioned. I'm not trying to avoid the court having authority over me to avoid being sanctioned. And he wrote, I am a member of the State Bar of New York and am admitted to the Eastern District of New York. I intend to apply for reciprocal admission to the Southern District. Again, that's where this case is being held. The fact that I have signed pleadings and letters filed in this court

does not reflect any attempt by me to evade responsibility for anything. However, Jay-Z and his legal team, they write here in this filing that Busby, quote, has not even sought interim admission pro hoc v. Shea while his application is pending, despite signing more filings over the ensuing weeks. Whether that reflects an improper effort to avoid the jurisdiction of this court, or just a failure to act with anything approaching reasonable diligence,

it reinforces the propriety of imposing sanctions here. So Spiro doubles down and tries to reassure the court that what Busby is accused of here, these Rule 11 violations, he says that he has committed, that they are extreme, that this isn't levying, quote, irrelevant ad hominem attacks against Tony Busby. Now, that is seemingly in reference to what I mentioned before, where the judge had chastised Alex Spiro for what he was. saying about Tony Busby. They're saying it goes beyond this. This is not just personal ad hominem attacks or anything like this. And they even claim that Tony Busby is a repeat offender. So Alex

Spiro writes, on October 14th, 2024, he, meaning Tony Busby, filed a different complaint on behalf of an anonymous John Doe against Mr. Combs that has also contained easily disprovable allegations. For example, that complaint asserted that John Doe had never been married. But CNN reported the contrary. He was married, and his marriage purportedly ended after the alleged assault. That is information that any attorney could obtain during an introductory meeting with his client by simply asking questions about his marital history or how the alleged assault impacted his life. The complaint also asserted that Doe was assaulted in 2006 in the Hamptons at Mr. Combs' white party. But again, CNN revealed that the White Party was held in St. Trope in 2006 and in the Hamptons in 2007,

something Mr. Busby could have learned through a simple Google search. So let me just take a quick pause here to talk about this, because a counterargument for Tony Busby to fight against this, I imagine could be none of these inconsistencies in Jane Doe's account or John Doe's account make the story not true. With respect to Jane Doe, yeah, there may be details that are wrong, but isn't that natural? We're talking about something that happened 24 years ago,

Well, now 25 years ago, but 24 years ago when she filed the complaint. And if the allegations are true, a victim of sexual assault could have recall issues, given the trauma of that event, especially the age that she was at or allegedly at. But Spiro and Jay-Z kind of respond to that. They write, no corroborating data can fix the problem that virtually every event in plaintiff's narrative is contradicted by indisputable facts. And at any rate, even if there was some reason to conclude that the, complaint could be salvaged, the appropriate course of action would be to voluntarily dismiss

the complaint without prejudice, meaning it could be refiled again under Rule 41, while Mr. Busby determines whether the claims have a reasonable factual basis, not to leave a fundamentally defective and defamatory complaint on the docket while Mr. Busby does the work he should have done before he commenced suit. And Spiro also cites case law from this appellate court decision in support of sanctions. It's called the Levine case. And he writes, There, the court upheld sanctions where subsequent deposition testimony from both the plaintiff and one of the defendants revealed that statements in the pleadings and other filings were provably false.

In so doing, the Second Circuit credited the district court's conclusions that the complaint's allegations were not well-grounded in fact, and that plaintiff's counsel had ignored facts revealed through reasonable inquiry and perpetuated his misconduct through the filing of numerous memoranda well after his errors were revealed to him. That is precisely what Mr. Busby has done here. The court should come to the same conclusion as the second circuit in Levine. Now, this is a good argument, but at the same time, we don't know exactly what the facts were in Levine could be kind of different with what we're dealing with here.

I'm sure when Tony Busby responds, he will address that case as well. But just going to one final thing that Alex Spiro writes in this filing. It's important because he writes, the nature of the allegations here warrant sanctions. This is not a contract dispute or a patent case. This is an allegation of child rape. To sign a pleading accusing someone of such a horrific crime without adequately vetting the allegation, particularly when the defendant's prominence means that the allegation will be repeated in headlines across the world is deeply wrong and unethical.

If lawyers do not face consequences for such a cavalier effort to destroy another person's reputation and inflict emotional harm on his loved ones, that tactic will proliferate. Now, I am sure, as I mentioned, we will see a response, a legal response from Tony Busby. It may mirror some of the arguments that he made from a prior filing, where he argued that Rule 11 sanctions based on just questions that are raised from one NBC interview. That's not warranted, especially when we're talking about just typical disputes that happen in every case. Of course, witnesses may have different recollections of events than a plaintiff or a defendant.

That's why we have trials. That's not enough reason to withdraw a complaint or sanction an attorney. So I imagine we will see something like that. But let's see what happens next in this very, very, very ugly legal war. That's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Everybody, thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber.

I'll speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this law and crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.