Jay-Z has filed a motion to dismiss the ongoing sexual assault lawsuit against him.
A federal lawsuit refiled on December 8 last year alleged that Sean “Diddy” Combs and Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, sexually assaulted a “Jane Doe” plaintiff during an MTV Video Music Awards afterparty in 2000.
The woman has since acknowledged certain inconsistencies in her story.
On Wednesday, Jay-Z’s lawyers filed a motion pointing to those inconsistencies as grounds to dismiss the lawsuit.
Variety reports that Jay-Z’s attorney Alex Spiro cited the woman’s interview with NBC News, where she acknowledged she had made “some mistakes” in the retelling of her story.
Spiro further argues in the motion that the accuser’s lawyer Tony Buzbee is accusing Jay-Z of “a horrific crime without adequately vetting the allegation.”
At a press briefing last month, Spiro said the woman’s claim relied on an “impossible timeline” and a nonexistent location. While the lawsuit said the assault happened at a “large white residence with a U-shaped driveway,” photos show both Jay-Z and Combs at a nightclub following the award show.
In the suit, the woman said she snuck out of a window of her home in Rochester and hitched a ride to the award ceremony from a friend, who has since died. She said she watched the event on a jumbotron outside, then befriended a limousine driver who drove her to the house party where she was assaulted by the two rap moguls.
Following the alleged rape, she said she fled the house and called her father for a ride home from a nearby gas station.
The allegation, Spiro said, “defies credibility.” It would’ve taken her five hours to drive from Rochester, the lawyer noted, meaning she would’ve had to leave her home by 3 p.m. Permits and photographs show there was no jumbotron outside the VMAs in 2000, according to Spiro. The woman’s father has said he does not recall driving from Rochester to pick her up in New York City.
“It’s not just that this story is a lie and that it’s not true, it’s provably, demonstrably false,” Spiro said. “This never happened.”
He added that he expects the case to be dismissed.
“If it’s not, eventually this will all crumble, because it can’t possibly have happened mathematically,” he said. “You don’t even need witnesses. They don’t have any witnesses because this never happened and you don’t need witnesses because the time doesn’t work. There’s literally photographic evidence that proves that this could not have happened.”
The lawsuit came amid a wave of sexual assault suits levied against Combs, who remains in custody in New York awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. He has pleaded not guilty and faces trial in May.
