NEW YORK (AP) — An attorney defending Jay-Z against the rape allegation brought against him last week by an unnamed woman outlined a range of evidence Monday that he said showed the accuser’s account to be “provably, demonstrably false.”
The woman told NBC News last week that Jay-Z and Sean “Diddy” Combs sexually assaulted her in 2000, when she was 13, at an after-party for the MTV Music Awards. She has since acknowledged certain inconsistencies in her story.
Speaking to reporters at Roc Nation’s New York headquarters, Jay-Z’s attorney, Alex Spiro, said the woman’s claim relied on an “impossible timeline” and a nonexistent location. While the lawsuit said the assault happened at a “large white residence with a U-shaped driveway,” photos show both Jay-Z, whose legal name is Shawn Carter, and Combs at a nightclub following the award show.
In the suit, the woman said she snuck out of a window of her home in Rochester and hitched a ride to the award ceremony from a friend, who has since died. She said she watched the event on a jumbotron outside, then befriended a limousine driver who drove her to the house party where she was assaulted by the two rap moguls.
Following the alleged rape, she said she fled the house and called her father for a ride home from a nearby gas station.
The allegation, Spiro said, “defies credibility.” It would’ve taken her five hours to drive from Rochester, the lawyer noted, meaning she would’ve had to leave her home by 3 p.m. Permits and photographs show there was no jumbotron outside the VMAs in 2000, according to Spiro. The woman’s father has said he does not recall driving from Rochester to pick her up in New York City.
“It’s not just that this story is a lie and that it’s not true, it’s provably, demonstrably false,” Spiro said. "This never happened.”
The suit comes amid a wave of sexual assault lawsuits levied against Combs, who remains in custody in New York awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. He has pleaded not guilty and faces trial in May.
The lawsuits were filed on the eve of the expiration of the Adult Survivors Act, a New York law permitting victims of sexual abuse a one-year window to file civil action regardless of the statute of limitations.
After initially suing Combs, the woman’s complaint was amended to include a new allegation that Jay-Z also participated in the sexual assault as a third unnamed celebrity watched.
The litigation was filed by Tony Buzbee, a personal injury attorney in Houston whose firm has set up a toll-free phone line for accusers. In October, Buzbee said he was representing some 120 people, men and women, with allegations of sexual misconduct against Combs.
Last month, Jay-Z anonymously sued Buzbee, alleging the lawyer had attempted to blackmail him by making the rape allegation public if he did not agree to a legal settlement. Buzbee has said the letter was simply trying to set up a confidential mediation session.
In a statement last week, Jay-Z said his “heart and support goes out to true victims in the world.”
On Monday, Spiro accused Buzbee of “taking advantage” of the woman, while "destroying this opportunity and the voices of real victims.”
In an emailed statement Monday, Buzbee said the woman had been referred to him by another law firm and vetted by four attorneys from his firm.
“Courts exist to resolve factual disputes,” Buzbee added. “Our client remains adamant about her claim.”
FILE - Jay-Z smiles ahead of the Champions League final soccer match between Borussia Dortmund and Real Madrid at Wembley stadium in London, Saturday, June 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, File)
FILE - Sean "Diddy" Combs arrives at the LA Premiere of "The Four: Battle For Stardom" at the CBS Radford Studio Center on May 30, 2018, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Willy Sanjuan/Invision/AP, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Former talk show host Carlos Watson was sentenced Monday to nearly 10 years in prison in a federal financial conspiracy case that cast his once-buzzy Ozy Media as an extreme of fake-it-'til-you-make-it startup culture.
In one example, another Ozy executive impersonated a YouTube executive to hype Ozy to investment bankers — while Watson coached him, prosecutors said.
Watson, 55, and the now-defunct company were found guilty last summer of charges including wire fraud conspiracy. He has denied the allegations and plans to appeal.
“I loved what we built with Ozy,” he said in court Monday, initially addressing supporters in the audience before the judge suggested he turn around. Watson told the judge he was a target of “selective prosecution” as a Black entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, where African American executives have been disproportionately few, and he called the case “a modern lynching.”
“I made mistakes. I'm very, very sorry that people are hurt, myself included,” he said, but “I don't think it's fair.”
Watson, who faced a mandatory minimum sentence of two years in prison and potentially as much as 37 years, remains free for now on $3 million bond. He is to surrender to prison March 28. Any restitution will be determined after a hearing in February.
U.S. District Judge Eric Komitee said Monday that the “quantum of dishonesty in this case is exceptional.”
“Your internal apparatus for separating truth from fiction became badly miscalibrated,” he told Watson in sentencing him.
Prosecutors accused the former cable news commentator and host of playing a leading role in a scheme to deceive Ozy investors and lenders by inflating revenue numbers, touting deals and offers that were nonexistent or not finalized, and flashing other false indications of Ozy's success.
Watson even listened in and texted talking points while his co-founder posed as a YouTube executive to praise Ozy on a phone call with potential investors, prosecutors said.
“His incessant and deliberate lies demonstrated not only a brazen disregard for the rule of law, but also a contempt for the values of honesty and fairness that should underlie American entrepreneurship,” Brooklyn-based U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement Monday. His office prosecuted the case.
During the trial, Watson's defense blamed any misrepresentations on others, particularly co-founder Samir Rao and former Ozy chief of staff Suzee Han. She and Rao pleaded guilty, are awaiting sentencing and testified against Watson.
Watson portrayed himself Monday as a founder who put everything he had into his company, saying that he took an average salary of around $51,000 from Ozy in its final years, has triple-mortgaged his home and drives a 15-year-old car.
After court, he questioned why Brooklyn-based federal prosecutors had gone after a California-based company and founder. Prosecutors declined to comment; the indictment alleged that scheming happened in the Brooklyn-based jurisdiction and elsewhere.
“I do think this is an attack on Black excellence,” Watson said after noting that his sentence wasn't far from the 11-year term meted out to Elizabeth Holmes. She's the white former Silicon Valley CEO convicted of duping investors in the Theranos blood-testing device hoax.
There's no parallel between faking blood test results and Ozy's roster of real programs and events, Watson said.
Ozy, founded in 2012, was styled as a hub of news and culture for millennials with a global outlook.
Watson boasted an impressive resume: degrees from Harvard University and Stanford Law School, a stint on Wall Street, on-air gigs at CNN and MSNBC, and entrepreneurial chops. Ozy Media was his second startup, coming a decade after he sold a test-prep company that he had founded while in his 20s.
Mountain View, California-based Ozy produced TV shows, newsletters, podcasts, and a music-and-ideas festival. Watson hosted several of the TV programs, including the Emmy-winning “Black Women OWN the Conversation,” which appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Network.
Ozy snagged big advertisers, clients and grants. But beneath the outward signs of success was an overextended company that struggled — and dissembled — to stay afloat after 2017, according to insiders' testimony.
The company strained to make payroll, ran late on rent and took out pricey cash advances to pay bills, former finance vice president Janeen Poutre told jurors. Meanwhile, Ozy gave prospective investors much bigger revenue numbers than those it reported to accountants, according to testimony and documents.
On the witness stand in July, Watson said the company's cash squeezes were just a startup norm and its investors knew they were getting unaudited numbers that could change.
Only one of those investors spoke at the sentencing — Beverly Watson, who stands by her brother. She told the court Monday that her biggest loss was “this important platform that elevated people and ideas that weren't being heard before.”
Ozy disintegrated in 2021, after a New York Times column disclosed the phone-call impersonation gambit and raised questions about the true size of the startup's audience.
FILE - Carlos Watson leaves Brooklyn federal court after testifying in his own defense in New York, Monday, July 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah, File)
