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The woman who accused him of raping her in 2000, when she was a minor, acknowledged to NBC that there were inconsistencies in her account, but stood by her claim.
Dec. 16, 2024, 6:27 p.m. ET
Lawyers for Jay-Z plan to ask a judge to toss a lawsuit accusing the rapper of raping a 13-year-old in 2000, pointing to what they described as “glaring inconsistencies” that emerged in an NBC interview of the accuser, who was not named in the suit.
In the lawsuit, which was filed last week, the unnamed accuser said that she had been raped by Jay-Z (born Shawn Carter) and Sean Combs at a party at a private residence after the MTV Video Music Awards in Manhattan in 2000. Mr. Carter strongly denied the allegation.
NBC News published an interview with the accuser on Friday evening in which she acknowledged inconsistencies in her account, but maintained that her allegation of assault was true.
The woman’s lawsuit claimed that after the encounter she was picked up by her father, whom she called from a gas station. But NBC reported that her father, who would have had to drive hours from his home in upstate New York to pick up his daughter following the after-party, did not recall having done so. The father was also unnamed in the report.
The plaintiff, who now lives in Alabama, also told NBC that she had spoken to the musician Benji Madden, a member of the band Good Charlotte, at the party after the awards that night. But Mr. Madden, who was not accused of any wrongdoing in her suit, was on tour in the Midwest at the time.
Alex Spiro, a lawyer for Mr. Carter, wrote a letter Friday night to U.S. District Court Judge Analisa Torres saying that Mr. Carter intends to file a motion to strike the complaint, citing the NBC report. “The interview outs plaintiff’s allegations for what they are: a sham,” he wrote in the letter.