A woman who accused Jay-Z of raping her when she was 13 has formally withdrawn the allegation, stating in a court declaration filed Thursday that she has never met the rapper.
The woman, identified in court papers only as Jane Doe, first filed suit in October 2024, claiming she was drugged and raped by Sean “Diddy” Combs and an unnamed celebrity at a party following an awards show in 2000. The suit was amended in December 2024 to name Jay-Z, whose legal name is Shawn Carter, as the second attacker.
In her new 12-page declaration, filed in Manhattan federal court, she wrote: “I have never met or spoken to Mr. Carter.” She added that there was “no truth to any of my claims against Mr. Carter.”
Carter denied the allegation when it surfaced, calling it a blackmail attempt, and sued the woman’s former lawyer, Tony Buzbee, and his firm for malicious prosecution. He had already filed a separate extortion suit against Buzbee in California in November 2024, alleging he received a threatening demand letter before the claim went public. That suit was dismissed, and a California appeals court upheld the dismissal earlier this month.
The woman dropped her original lawsuit in February 2025. According to her declaration, she began doubting her own account in January 2025, questioning whether she had ever attended a party with celebrities at all. She said her lawyers filed the initial complaint without her authorization, gave her 1,200 dollars in cash around a December 2024 interview with NBC News in Houston, and later asked her to take a polygraph test after inconsistencies emerged in her story. She said she never received the results.
She traced the origin of her claim to a Facebook advertisement she saw in September or October 2024, seeking people with sexual assault allegations against Combs. The advertisement, she said, triggered memories of being raped at 13, though she now believes she misidentified Jay-Z as one of the men involved. She said she received no payment for her new declaration.
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The woman’s current attorney, James Blair Newman Jr., said in a statement that she “sincerely and unconditionally apologizes to Mr. Carter and his family,” while maintaining that she believes she was a genuine victim of sexual assault, just mistaken about who was responsible.
Jay-Z has voluntarily dismissed the woman as a defendant in his New York lawsuit. That case against Buzbee and his firm continues. Combs, who was not part of the recantation, is currently serving a four-year sentence on unrelated prostitution-related charges following a 2025 conviction.
