Jay-Z asks court to reboot extortion lawsuit after accuser recants

Days after Jay-Z's rape accuser recanted her allegations, the superstar rapper is asking a California appeals court to revive his extortion lawsuit against the lawyers who filed the case.

The accuser, known only as Jane Doe, last week admitted that her allegations were false and claimed Tony Buzbee and other lawyers had conducted little due diligence in her now-defunct 2024 lawsuit.

In a petition obtained by Billboard, lawyers for Jay-Z, legal name Shawn Carter, asked for a rehearing of their case against Buzbee.

A California appeals court previously ruled on 10 September that Jay-Z could not sue Buzbee for extortion or defamation.

"The record contains no evidence Buzbee accused Carter of raping Jane Doe while knowing those statements to be false or with reckless disregard as to whether they were true," the appeals court wrote in a decision obtained by Billboard.

"To the contrary, Buzbee submitted declarations showing his firm's investigations led him to subjectively believe in the truth of the accusations."

In the new petition, Jay-Z's attorneys say that the accuser's "extraordinary" recantation is enough for the court to reconsider its recent ruling because it shows that Buzbee's lawsuit against the star was "built on lies".

In a previous statement to Billboard, Buzbee called the extortion lawsuit "total bulls**t."

In court filings last week, his legal team also blasted the recantation, calling their former client, who was 13 at the time of the previously alleged assault, an "unreliable" witness and suggesting Jay-Z had paid her to drop her allegations.

In a declaration filed last week, Jane Doe said there was "no truth to any of my claims" against Jay-Z, and that she was not being paid for her statement.