The 2024 lawsuit that had the whole internet holding its breath just fully collapsed. The woman who accused Jay-Z of raping her when she was 13 filed a sworn statement this week saying none of it was true.
In the declaration, filed Thursday in federal court in New York, she wrote: “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.” She said there was “no truth to any of my claims” and that she was not paid for the statement.
Quick backstory: she sued Jay-Z and Sean “Diddy” Combs in December 2024, claiming they assaulted her after the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards. She later dropped the suit, and Jay-Z turned around and sued her and her lawyers for defamation and malicious prosecution. His lawyers are now dropping her as a defendant in that case.
She also said her former lawyers filed the original complaint without investigating anything and without showing her a draft, weeks after she contacted them through a Facebook ad seeking people harmed by Combs. Her new lawyer says she apologizes to Jay-Z and his family, and maintains she believes she was genuinely assaulted as a teen, just by someone else.
The internet is, predictably, split in half over it. One side says the recantation proves it was a money grab all along. The other side says a billionaire’s legal team can make anybody sign anything. Either way, the lawsuit is done.