As any deep pocket client of Alex Spiro will tell you, the high-profile trial attorney often executes a maximum impact strategy of very targeted attacks on the case against said client, as well as the planting of legal landmines to blow up the other side down the line.
That combination is exactly what the Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan partner just did for Jay-Z (real name Shawn Carter) today in the Jane Doe underage rape case against the ‘Empire State of Mind’ singer and the currently imprisoned Sean “Diddy” Combs. Now, with big blowback from a lawyer representing potential victims of Combs and others, Spiro may have overplayed his hand or gotten precisely the reaction he wanted.
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A day after Spiro and Jay-Z strongly sought to have the refiled rape action against the “99 Problems” superstar and Combs either tossed out of court or have the name of the then 13-year-old plaintiff from the alleged 2000 assault by the two rappers and a still unnamed female “Celebrity B” unmasked, a two-page letter and declaration from colleague Mari Henderson has been sent to Judge Analisa Torres casting the other side as far, far worse than mere Ambulance chasers.
“After detailing her experiences to an attorney at Mr. Buzbee’s firm, he pressed for a connection to Mr. Combs, asking ‘at what point did you meet Diddy,’ even though she made clear that her case was unrelated to Mr. Combs,” Henderson’s declaration states of the law firm of Tony Buzbee, who is currently representing dozens and dozens of anonymous alleged victims of sexual abuse by the “All About the Benjamins” performer.
The unnamed Texas resident here had reached out to Buzbee’s firm after seeing the media savvy lawyer on TV earlier this fall talking about Combs, who had been charged with sex trafficking in his NYC arrest on September 16. The woman in question sent into the firm’s website some information about a sex trafficking incident she said had occurred to her – again, not including Sean Combs.
“After not hearing from Mr. Buzbee’s firm for weeks, during which this woman tried to contact the firm multiple times, she spoke again with a member of the firm who pressed her to confirm false details regarding her experiences as a victim, including that she was drugged, held down, pushed, and physically assaulted,” the declaration adds, and the letter from Spiro notes too. “She felt directed and coached by Mr. Buzbee’s firm to say that someone held her down and put drugs in her mouth when that was not her experience. She felt forced to lie.”
“When the woman made clear she was unwilling to adapt to the narrative Mr. Buzbee’s firm laid out and wanted only to speak her truth, she was dropped as a client and told that Mr. Buzbee’s firm was unwilling to represent her any longer.
Just hours after Jay-Z surprisingly appeared Monday at the L.A. premiere of Disney’s Mufasa: The Lion King with the film’s voiceover stars Beyoncé and daughter Blue Ivy, the dual filing by his defense team has Buzbee preparing to go scorched Earth with some very, very serious accusations of his own.
Declaring that it is “patently ridiculous” that his Houston-based firm tried to strongarm a woman into anonymously pursuing a civil case against the Bad Boy Records founder even though “her experiences as a victim of trafficking by celebrities” was “entirely unrelated to Mr. Combs (or Mr. Carter),” Buzbee told Deadline the allegations made by Spiro in a letter to a federal judge Monday are pure BS.
“We don’t pressure people nor do we need to,” the openly aggressive attorney said after Spiro’s correspondence on behalf of Jay-Z appeared in the docket in New York earlier today. (See Tony Buzbee’s full statement below)
“I’m growing weary of responding to this kind of trash,” Buzbee went on to say. “Jay Z’s team is desperate and seemingly out of control. Their investigators have recently been caught on tape offering current clients of our firm one-thousand dollars to sue our firm. This conduct is reprehensible and illegal. There will be consequences coming soon.”
In just the past few minutes, Buzbee took to social media to offer even more information on the supposed payoff attempts he alleges. “These guys are on tape offering to pay clients to sue our law firm,” he writes with apparent transcripts. “That’s a crime.”
Longtime Elon Musk attorney Spiro, who has also been very successfully representing Alec Baldwin in his now dismissed Rust fatal shooting case, did not respond to a request from Deadline on Buzbee’s apparent bribery allegations. If they do, this post will be updated.
In this case, the brutal attack on the then teen Jane Doe is said to have occurred on September 7, 2000 during one of Diddy’s drug fueled so-called “freak offs” just after that year’s MTV VMAs. A very graphic October 20 filed lawsuit named Combs for the rape, but merely mentioned a male “Celebrity A” and a female “Celebrity B” who also carnally participated. Jay-Z was named as the “Celebrity A” in a December 8 refiling by Buzbee following a separate suit from a Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan-represented anonymous “celebrity and public figure who resides in Los Angeles” went after the Texas lawyer for extortion.
“These allegations are so heinous in nature that I implore you to file a criminal complaint, not a civil one!!” Jay-Z said in a handwritten statement after the refiling, with Spiro seeking the case to be dismissed or the alleged victim revealed in paperwork filed on December 8 in federal court. On social media on Sinday Buzbee called Jay-Z a “bully” and basically told him to go screw himself.
As for Sean Combs: After failing in late November in his third attempt at getting a proposed $50 million bail approved, the one time music mogul is scheduled to stand trial for racketeering, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution starting on May 5, 2025. Incarcerated at Brooklyn’s grim Metropolitan Detention Centre since his arrest almost two months ago, the 55-year-old Combs, who has entered a not guilty plea, faces life in prison if found guilty.
Read Jane Doe attorney Tony Buzbee’s full statement on Jay-Z’s legal team’s most recently filings here:
This allegation is patently ridiculous. If someone calls our intake group and has a viable case that we believe has merit and we can pursue we will pursue it. We are currently pursuing hundreds of cases against individuals and entities other than PDiddy. What we won’t do is pursue a case that we don’t believe has merit. Without telling me the woman’s name I can’t speak specifically to what she told the intake folks to even tell you what this woman claimed if and when she called. I can tell you we haven’t “dropped” any person like this. We don’t pressure people nor do we need to. What we have done is reject potential cases from people we find to not be credible. Understand we get a lot of prank calls. And we get a lot of calls from people who claim they are aggrieved but we just can’t help them. We certainly don’t need to “pressure” anyone to pursue a case. We have plenty of cases. What we can’t and won’t do is pursue a case we perceive to be weak or insupportable.
I’m growing weary of responding to this kind of trash. Jay Z’s team is desperate and seemingly out of control. Their investigators have recently been caught on tape offering current clients of our firm one thousand dollars to sue our firm. This conduct is reprehensible and illegal. There will be consequences coming soon.