Attorney Tony Buzbee Sues Jay-Z’s Roc Nation Over Alleged Conspiracy to ‘Obstruct Justice’
Reps for Roc Nation call the new lawsuit a "sham" and a "pathetic attempt" to distract from recently-revealed inconsistencies in Buzbee's rape case against the superstar.
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The legal war between Jay-Z and attorney Tony Buzbee intensified on Wednesday (Dec. 18), with both a new lawsuit accusing the star of orchestrating a conspiracy of “shadowy operatives” and a motion warning a judge that Buzbee might destroy evidence of his own alleged misconduct.
The filings came less than two weeks after Buzbee launched a lawsuit accusing the star (real name Shawn Carter) of raping an unnamed 13-year-old girl in 2000 alongside Sean “Diddy” Combs — a shocking allegation against one of the music industry’s most powerful figures.
In Wednesday’s new case, Buzbee accused Jay-Z’s company (Roc Nation) and its lawyers (attorney Marcy Croft, as well as the law firm Quinn Emanuel) of offering money to one of his former clients (Gerardo Garcia) to coax him into filing bogus lawsuits against his firm. Buzbee claims the incident, allegedly caught on tape, is part of a broader illegal effort to derail his case against Jay-Z.
“Defendants have conspired to obstruct justice by engaging shadowy operatives to illegally seek out more than two dozen current and former clients of The Buzbee Law Firm to convince those clients to bring frivolous cases against [the firm],” Buzbee wrote in the new complaint, filed in Houston court.
“This conduct was specifically targeted at our firm so we would not pursue cases related to the Diddy litigation,” Buzbee said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “But, we will not be bullied or intimidated. The defendants overstepped, got sloppy, and stupidly got caught in their illegal scheme on tape.”
In a statement to Billboard, a Roc Nation spokesperson responded by saying: “Tony Buzbee’s baloney lawsuit against Roc Nation is nothing but another sham. It’s a pathetic attempt to distract and deflect attention. This sideshow won’t change the ultimate outcome and true justice will be served soon.”
In her own statement, Croft offered a similar reaction: “Tony Buzbee has now conjured up fantastical allegations against me and my firm — well-known corruption fighters — in a desperate attempt to distract from his mounting legal woes. We look forward to addressing these false allegations and having them dismissed.”
The rape allegations against Jay-Z have sparked a broader legal war between his team and Buzbee, whom the superstar has called a “fraud.” Jay-Z secretly sued Buzbee for extortion last month, accusing him of concocting a “cynical” scheme to extract settlements from innocent celebrities by threatening to link them to Diddy. And Buzbee previously filed a lawsuit in Texas against Quinn Emanuel over similar allegations of retaliatory behavior.
Separately on Wednesday, attorneys for Jay-Z formally asked the federal judge overseeing the rape lawsuit to dismiss him from the case, citing a bombshell NBC News interview on Friday (Dec. 13) in which his accuser admitted inconsistencies and “mistakes” in her story and her own father contradicted her story.
“The timeline, location, and occurrence of events alleged in plaintiff’s complaint are rendered impossible by these admissions,” Jay-Z’s lawyers write. “Plaintiff’s unsupported allegations crumble under scrutiny, as the evidence—and lack thereof—reveals glaring inconsistencies and outright impossibilities in her story.”
The new motion once again pinned the blame for the problems squarely on Buzbee, accusing him of failing to properly vet the allegations against Jay-Z before filing them in court. It cited his own quotes in the NBC story, in which he said the claims had been vetted by another law firm.
In addition to seeking to dismiss the case, Wednesday’s filing warned that Buzbee might destroy evidence of such missteps and demanded a court order prohibiting him from doing so.
“The fundamental inconsistencies in Plaintiff’s case revealed in the NBC interview, coupled with Buzbee’s chronic inability to follow the rules in this case and others, creates a substantial risk that Buzbee will destroy evidence damaging to Plaintiff’s case, including evidence of his own misconduct,” the star’s lawyers write.
