Jay-Z Accuser Recants, Leaving Her Lawyer in Court

Jane Doe told a Manhattan federal court on September 24, 2026, that Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter never raped her and that she has never met him. The same day, Carter’s lawyers dropped her as a defendant in his malicious prosecution case and left Houston lawyer Tony Buzbee and his firm as the remaining targets.

The filing does not end the fight that started when her 2024 complaint named Carter beside Sean “Diddy” Combs. It hands Carter a sworn exhibit against the lawyer who put that complaint on a public docket, 15 days after a California appeals court had already shielded Buzbee on a different theory.

Jane Doe Swears She Never Met Jay-Z

The woman, still identified only as Jane Doe, signed an 11-page declaration under penalty of perjury. Lawyers for Carter filed it in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, in case 1:26-cv-02775-DEH.

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. There is no truth to any of my claims against Mr. Carter. I understand my false accusations have caused Mr. Carter immense pain, suffering, and damage that can never be fully undone.

Jane Doe, sworn declaration, Southern District of New York

She also walked back the scene that made the original case famous: that Carter and Combs raped her while a third celebrity watched. She wrote that those claims were false. In the same papers she said Combs did not rape her in that incident, a statement separate from the criminal case that later sent Combs to prison.

Her new lawyer in the malicious prosecution case, James Blair Newman Jr., said she was not paid for the declaration. She wrote that she received no money from Carter or anyone acting for him, and that Carter’s team did not threaten her.

WHAT THE DECLARATION NOW STATES

• Carter: She has never met or spoken to him and says he never engaged in any inappropriate conduct toward her.
• The 2000 party claim: She now says the account of a rape by Carter and Combs, with another celebrity watching, is false.
• Payment: She says she was promised nothing and paid nothing for the September 24 declaration.
• Her own lawyer’s gloss: Newman says she still maintains she was sexually assaulted, and that she was entirely mistaken in naming Carter.

Carter’s representatives had no comment on the filing. In February 2025, after she first dismissed her own suit, his lawyer Alex Spiro said Carter “never paid 1 red penny” and had “cleared his name.” The new declaration is the first time she has said, in a sworn court paper, that she never met him at all.

The Remaining Defendant in Manhattan

Carter did not dismiss the rest of the case. Buzbee, who Houston personal injury trial firm materials describe as the founder of The Buzbee Law Firm, remains a defendant along with the firm and other lawyers named in Carter’s papers, including David Fortney and Antigone Curis.

Carter’s malicious prosecution complaint in Manhattan accuses those lawyers of using a false rape claim to pressure him into a secret payout. He has said Buzbee sent demand letters, then named him in the civil case after he refused to pay. Buzbee has called that a standard demand letter, not extortion, and has said no dollar figure and no threat were in the letters.

On September 1, 2026, Buzbee and co-counsel moved to throw the New York case out. They called Carter’s suit “improper” and “abusive,” and wrote that “this case is itself a malicious prosecution.” They argued that filing a Jane Doe sexual assault complaint is not misconduct, and that gaps in a story about a claimed 2000 assault, when the plaintiff said she had been drugged at age 13, were not proof of bad faith.

Reached after the new declaration, Buzbee said he had not seen it.

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.

Tony Buzbee, email statement

He said a former major crimes detective was hired to vet her facts, and that her case arrived from another firm with intake notes already attached. He has said court filings, including the original demand letter, were explained to her in detail. On the money, he said he believed she received “some petty cash” for meals and travel.

That split is now the whole case. Jane Doe is out. The question left for a New York judge is whether Buzbee and the other lawyers had probable cause to file, and whether they used the court process to squeeze Carter after he said no.

How a Facebook Ad Became a Lawsuit

The declaration traces the 2024 complaint to a social post, not to a meeting with Carter. In late September or early October 2024, Jane Doe wrote, she answered a Facebook ad seeking people with sexual assault claims against Combs. “The ad triggered memories of being raped when I was 13 years old,” she wrote. She filled out a form and got a call.

She said she was connected with AVA Law Group, signed a representation agreement, and that the matter was then referred to Buzbee’s firm. On that first call, she recalled saying she was a model who went to an afterparty after the Teen Choice Awards in 2000 in New York. The lawsuit that followed said the show was the MTV Video Music Awards, a different broadcast, and described a night at “a large white house” after a ride in Combs’s limousine.

She wrote that the October 2024 complaint against Combs was filed without her knowledge, without an independent investigation, and without a draft for her to review. She said she did not recall signing a retainer with Buzbee. She met him, she wrote, only shortly before a December 2024 television interview in Houston, after other lawyers at the firm had already been handling her.

The firm paid for flights, meals, and a hotel, she wrote, took her shopping “to get camera ready,” and coached her on “how to act and what to say.” She texted her mother that she would “try to make sure I come back with some cash.” During that brief first meeting, she wrote, “Mr. Buzbee gave me $1000 in cash for myself and my family.”

After the NBC interview, she wrote, her lawyers asked for a polygraph because of discrepancies. She said she never got the results. In January 2025 she “began to doubt my claims against Mr. Carter” and “began doubting that I ever went to a party with celebrities.” After she told her lawyers, she wrote, they said they were dismissing the suit.

THE ROAD FROM THE AD TO THE RECANT

1. Late September or early October 2024: She answers a Facebook ad about Combs claims, fills out a form, and takes a call from a referring firm.
2. October 2024: A complaint naming Combs, and an unnamed male celebrity, is filed in New York. She says she was not shown a draft.
3. Early November 2024: Buzbee’s side sends Carter two demand letters seeking a private resolution. Carter refuses.
4. December 2024: An amended complaint names Carter. She travels to Houston, sits for a television interview, and writes that Buzbee handed her $1,000 in cash.
5. January 2025: She tells her lawyers she doubts the Carter claim and doubts she attended any celebrity party.
6. February 14, 2025: The complaint is voluntarily dismissed with prejudice, so it cannot be filed again.
7. September 24, 2026: She recants under oath. Carter drops her from his New York case and keeps Buzbee in it.

Carter has said from the first day that the claim was a shakedown. In December 2024 he called the allegations “heinous in nature,” described a “blackmail attempt,” and wrote that he would not give “ONE RED PENNY.” In a sworn statement of his own he said a demand letter felt like “an existential threat,” and that he felt Buzbee was “placing a gun to my head.”

California Already Shielded the Demand Letter

Buzbee is not walking into New York as a lawyer who has already lost every round. On September 9, 2026, California’s Second Appellate District, in unpublished case B347898, rejected Carter’s bid to revive an extortion and defamation suit over those same demand letters. Associate Justice Anne Richardson, writing for a unanimous panel, said there was no evidence Buzbee accused Carter of rape while knowing the statements were false, or with reckless disregard for the truth.

The unanimous California appeals ruling is 24 pages. It found that Buzbee’s firm and a referral firm submitted declarations showing they “subjectively believe[d] in the truth of the accusations.” It also held that the demand letter sat inside the litigation privilege, because “litigation was genuinely contemplated in good faith” and Jane Doe sued after Carter declined to mediate.

Los Angeles County Judge Mark Epstein had already dismissed that California case in a 65-page ruling. He wrote that he was not “wholly satisfied” and closed with “stay tuned.” An audio clip from February 2025, recorded by private investigators on an Alabama porch, had briefly unsettled the privilege analysis. In a snippet later described in court, Jane Doe answered “Yeah” when asked whether Carter “didn’t have anything to do with any sexual acts towards you,” and said Buzbee “kind of pushed me towards going forward with him, with Jay-Z.”

Epstein later called that conversation “not as clear as either party would like.” Jane Doe said she felt intimidated by the investigators. Buzbee’s lawyers attacked the tape. In 2025 Buzbee said Carter’s investigators had “harassed, threatened and harangued” her for weeks. The September 24 declaration now says she recanted of her own accord and was not threatened by Carter.

TWO COURTS, TWO OUTCOMES

Buzbee said after the California decision that “sending a basic demand letter prior to filing suit is not and will never be ‘extortion,’” and that he looked forward to recovering “every penny” of his fees. That win does not decide New York. Malicious prosecution asks a different question: whether the underlying New York complaint was filed without probable cause and with malice, and whether it ended in Carter’s favor, which the February 14, 2025 dismissal with prejudice already did.

What the New York Case Still Requires

Carter still has to prove more than a recantation. New York malicious prosecution, in a civil case, typically needs a proceeding filed without probable cause, malice, a favorable termination, and a special injury beyond ordinary defense costs. Buzbee’s September 1 motion already attacks the special-injury piece and calls Carter’s suit a revenge filing.

The declaration is useful to Carter because it goes to probable cause. If a jury believes she never met him, never reviewed the complaint, and told lawyers about mental health conditions without being asked how those conditions affected memory, then the “we believed her” defense gets harder. If a jury believes Buzbee’s account, that four lawyers heard the same story and a detective checked it, then a later recant looks like a client who changed her mind, not a lawyer who invented a defendant.

She wrote that she disclosed “mental health conditions” and “was never asked any questions about whether this affected my memory and recollection of the allegations.” Newman’s statement tries to hold both ideas at once: she was assaulted, and she was wrong about Carter. That is a narrow path. It preserves a claimed assault 24 years after 2000 while stripping the only famous name her first lawyers attached to it.

Combs, who denied her original claim, is serving a 50-month sentence after a July 2025 conviction on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. His lawyers have said he “never sexually assaulted or trafficked anyone, man or woman, adult or minor.” That conviction is a different case. Jane Doe’s 2024 complaint was not the prosecution that put him in prison.

Buzbee still represents other people with civil claims against Combs. A recant in one referred file does not wipe those files out. It does put a sworn statement in the New York record that a complaint went out, in her telling, before she saw it and before anyone corroborated it.

She Still Says She Was Assaulted

Newman’s line is the part of the week that will not fit on a scoreboard. “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,” he said. “She sincerely and unconditionally apologizes to Mr. Carter and his family.”

Carter has described the cost in family terms since December 2024. After the February 14, 2025 dismissal he said the “frivolous, fictitious and appalling allegations” were gone, and that “the trauma that my wife, my children, loved ones and I have endured can never be dismissed.” The September 24 papers repeat that harm in Jane Doe’s own voice, then ask a court to measure it against Buzbee, not against her.

Some of the loudest public reaction treated the recant as delayed justice and treated dropping Jane Doe as a gift she should not have received. The quieter legal reading is colder. A plaintiff who recants is a weak defendant and a strong witness. Keeping her in the caption would have turned every hearing into a referendum on a woman who now says she never met the man she sued. Taking her out leaves a record, a privilege waiver fight still to come, and a lawyer who has to explain a Facebook intake, a cash envelope, and a complaint she says she never read.

Buzbee’s answer is already on paper: she told the same story to at least four lawyers, a detective looked at it, and a California court found that he subjectively believed her when he sent the letters. New York will decide whether that is enough, now that she has sworn the story about Carter was never true.

If you or someone you know has been affected by sexual assault, RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline is 1-800-656-HOPE (4673). Crisis Text Line takes “HELLO” or “HOLA” by SMS at 741-741.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting on court filings and public statements. It is informational only and is not legal advice, a finding of liability, or a determination of any claim still pending in New York. Readers with questions about a lawsuit, a declaration, or a professional-conduct complaint should consult a licensed attorney in the relevant jurisdiction before acting. Figures, case captions, and party positions reflect the cited filings and statements as of September 24, 2026, and may change as the Manhattan case proceeds.