The very public dispute between Jay-Z and lawyer Tony Buzbee is becoming a distracting side-show to the criminal investigation into, and flood of civil lawsuits against, Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, with both sides now sending letters to a New York court.
Jay-Z’s legal team and Buzbee have been sparring behind the scenes for some time, but it all became public last weekend when the attorney added the rapper and Roc Nation boss, real name Shawn Carter, as a defendant on one of the Diddy lawsuits he is overseeing.
In that amended lawsuit, Carter is accused of raping a thirteen year old girl at a party, alongside Combs, in 2000. Carter has strongly denied that allegation, made by an unnamed woman, while calling Buzbee an “ambulance chaser in a cheap suit” and a “deplorable human” who is trying to extort money out of the rapper by making such serious allegations public.
In a new letter to the court, Carter’s lawyer accuses Buzbee’s law firm of improper conduct when seeking clients to represent who have made allegations of sexual assault against Combs and his associates.
Buzbee, writes Carter’s attorney Alex Spiro, has “engaged in a campaign to leverage unfounded and heinous allegations against celebrities to secure large settlements”. In that campaign, Spiro says, Buzbee “seeks neither justice nor peace for his victims - he seeks only to benefit himself”.
Spiro then claims that his law firm has been approached by a woman who previously got in touch with Buzbee’s firm to discuss it representing her in relation to allegations of trafficking and abuse that were unrelated to Combs or Carter. Buzbee’s team, Spiro alleges, made it clear they wanted allegations against Combs, while also encouraging the woman to embellish her claims.
An employee at Buzbee's firm, Spiro writes, “asked the woman when she met Diddy even though her account did not relate to Mr Combs at all”, and also advised that talking to law enforcement about her allegations was “not encouraged”.
In a subsequent conversation, Spiro goes on, the women felt Buzbee’s team “were pressing her to make allegations of being drugged, held down and physically assaulted - allegations that were not true”.
“When the woman declined to adopt the version of events proposed by members of the Buzbee firm”, Spiro adds, “she was summarily dropped as a client”.
This alleged misconduct justifies Carter wanting to “thoroughly investigate, test, and respond to the spurious allegations that have been levelled against him”, Spiro adds, and to that end the court should make the woman accusing the rapper of rape reveal her identity.
Needless to say, Buzbee is forthright in his response.
Spiro’s letter, he tells the court in his own letter, “is nothing short of defamation hiding behind the thinnest veneer of litigation privilege”, which is to say Carter and his team are defaming Buzbee but, because it’s in a letter to the court relating to a lawsuit, he can’t sue for defamation.
He then adds, “to be clear, my firm and I categorically deny all of the baseless allegations levied by Mr Carter and his counsel”.
While Spiro’s allegations of misconduct against Buzbee have been prompted by the single rape claim against Carter, they could be seized upon by Combs’ legal team who are currently battling numerous lawsuits that are being coordinated by Buzbee’s firm.