The anonymous woman who accused Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter of sexual assault has recanted every allegation in a sworn court declaration, stating she never met him, a reversal that strengthens Carter's malicious prosecution case against the attorney who filed the original suit.
In a 12-page declaration reviewed by CBS News, the Jane Doe plaintiff wrote plainly: "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 added that there is "no truth to any of my claims against Mr. Carter."
The declaration goes further. The woman acknowledged that her "false accusations have caused Mr. Carter immense pain, suffering and damage that can never be fully undone." Carter, for his part, wrote that the "trauma" he, his family, and his loved ones endured because of the allegations "can never be dismissed."
The recantation effectively guts one of the most explosive celebrity legal stories of the past year, and redirects attention squarely at the Texas-based attorney who brought the suit in the first place.
The woman's declaration lays out a troubling sequence. She said she saw a Facebook ad seeking people who might have sexual assault claims against Sean "Diddy" Combs. The ad triggered memories of being raped as a teenager, she said, and when she contacted the company behind the ad, she was connected with the Buzbee Law Firm.
What happened next, by her account, raises serious questions about the firm's practices. The initial lawsuit was filed in October 2024 by attorney Tony Buzbee and his firm, without her knowledge, she stated. Two months later, in December 2024, the complaint was amended to add Carter as a defendant.
The amended complaint alleged that the woman had been invited to a Video Music Awards afterparty as a teenager. She claimed that after accepting a drink, she felt lightheaded and went to lie down. The suit alleged that Carter, Combs, and another woman entered the room and that Combs and Carter assaulted her. Those allegations are now fully withdrawn as they relate to Carter.
Carter has maintained his innocence from the start. He accused Buzbee and the woman of conspiring to pressure him into a secret financial settlement. He alleged that Buzbee sent him an "extortionate demand letter" in October 2024, and that after Carter refused to pay, the lawsuit was amended to name him as a defendant. That timeline, demand letter first, lawsuit amendment second, is central to Carter's counterattack.
Celebrity legal disputes often play out alongside broader cultural dramas. The entertainment world has been consumed in recent weeks by spectacles like Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's Madison Square Garden wedding, but the Carter case carries weightier implications about how the legal system can be weaponized against public figures.
The woman's doubts surfaced quickly once Carter was named. By January 2025, she began questioning not only her claims against Carter but whether she had "ever went to a party with celebrities" at all. When she communicated those doubts to her legal team, she said her lawyers dismissed the lawsuit.
Her new attorney, James Blair Newman Jr., issued a statement threading a narrow needle. He said his 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." The woman still claims she was assaulted, she simply says Carter had nothing to do with it.
That distinction matters legally. It preserves the woman's claim of personal victimhood while conceding that Carter was falsely accused. It also leaves unanswered whether her recantation extends to the allegations against Combs, who was named in the original October 2024 filing.
On Thursday, Carter filed a notice voluntarily dismissing the woman as a defendant in his malicious prosecution lawsuit. The move signals that Carter views the accuser as a pawn, not the architect, of the scheme he alleges. His lawsuit against Buzbee and the Buzbee Law Firm remains active in New York.
Combs, meanwhile, is serving a four-year sentence for prostitution-related charges. His legal team has characterized Buzbee's various lawsuits as "shameless publicity stunts, designed to extract payments from celebrities who fear having lies spread about them." Other plaintiffs represented by Buzbee continue to sue Combs for sexual assault, with alleged abuse at parties in New York, California, and Florida.
The Combs legal saga has rippled through his family as well. Combs' twin daughters recently launched a fashion brand while their father serves his federal sentence, a reminder that the fallout from these cases extends well beyond courtrooms.
Buzbee's firm, based in Texas, has built a high-profile practice around mass-tort celebrity litigation. Carter's countersuit in New York amounts to a direct challenge to that business model, and the recantation hands Carter potent ammunition. A plaintiff who says the suit was filed without her knowledge, who doubts she attended the event in question, and who now calls her own accusations false is a devastating witness against the lawyer who brought the case.
Several questions remain open. The specific court handling Carter's malicious prosecution case has not been publicly identified. The content and dollar amount of the alleged "extortionate demand letter" have not been disclosed. And it is unclear whether the woman's original lawsuit was formally dismissed by a court or simply abandoned by her attorneys internally.
Legal disputes involving celebrities often unfold alongside the broader spectacle of fame and public image. Travis Kelce recently fought a secret trademark lawsuit in the days before his own wedding, a reminder that even the most celebrated public figures face legal exposure that can surface without warning.
The entertainment industry's social dynamics have also been on display. Blake Lively's very public exclusion from Taylor Swift's wedding guest list showed how quickly alliances shift in that world, though the stakes in the Carter case are of an entirely different order.
Carter's written statement captured something that the legal filings alone cannot convey. The damage from a false accusation of this magnitude, rape of a minor, alleged alongside a co-defendant already convicted of sex-related crimes, does not vanish when the accuser changes her story. The accusation lives in search results, in headlines, in the public memory. A 12-page declaration cannot undo that.
The woman herself acknowledged as much, conceding that the harm she caused "can never be fully undone." Carter's decision to drop her from his lawsuit suggests he agrees that she is not the real problem. The real problem, in his telling, is the legal machinery that turned a Facebook ad into a federal accusation against a man the plaintiff now says she never met.
When the system makes it easy to file and hard to retract, the people who pay the highest price are the ones who were telling the truth all along.
