Watch: Beyoncé, Jay-Z Clap Back at Trolls Who “Hate” Them in First Collab in 7 Years
A woman who accused Jay-Z of sexual assault is recanting her claims.
Two years after the “Empire State of Mind” rapper(real name Shawn Carter) was accused of raping an unnamed woman—listed in court documents as Jane Doe—when she was just 13 years old, she has formally withdrawn her allegations, saying there was “no truth” to them, according to court documents obtained by E! News.
“I have never met or spoken to Mr. Carter. Mr. Carter never engaged in any inappropriate conduct toward me,” she wrote. “I understand my false accusations have caused Mr. Carter immense pain, suffering, and damage that can never be fully undone.”
E! News has reached out to reps for Jay-Z, as well as legal counsel for Jane Doe but has not received a comment.
The original claim, filed in December 2024, stated that Jay-Z had drugged and raped the woman at a party alongside Sean “Diddy” Combs in 2000. At the time the lawsuit was filed, Jay-Z emphatically denied the allegations and slammed the woman’s “false complaint” and alleged it was a “pursuit of money and fame” in a statement to E! News.
“This incident didn’t happen,” the rapper—who motioned to have the plaintiff’s name revealed but was denied—said at the time. “True Justice is coming. We fight FROM victory, not FOR victory. This was over before it began.”
Meanwhile, Jay-Z’s lawyer Alex Spiro said in a separate statement there was not enough vetting in the allegation to make a case.
“It is stunning that a lawyer would not only file such a serious complaint without proper vetting,” Spiro told E! News in 2024, “but would make things worse by further peddling this false story in the press.”
By February 2025, the woman had voluntarily dropped her suit—in tandem with the case being dismissed with prejudice, meaning she would not be able to refile the case in the future.
“Counsel for the Plaintiff have discussed this matter with counsel for each Defendant,” the document of the dismissal said at the time, “who acknowledge and consent to this submission.”
Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images
A month later, Jay-Z filed a countersuit against the woman in March 2025, with his lawyers claiming in his filing, that the original plaintiff had “voluntarily admitted directly to representatives of Mr. Carter that the story brought before the world in court and on global television was just that: a false, malicious story.”
Earlier this year, Jay-Z—who shares three kids with wife Beyoncé—said he was “heartbroken by everything that occurred” amid the legal back and forth.
“I was angry,” Jay-Z told GQ in an interview published in March. “I haven’t been that angry in a long time, uncontrollable anger. You don’t put that on someone—that’s a thing that you better be super sure. It used to be like that. You had to be super sure before you put those kind of things on a person. Especially a person like me.”
Nevertheless, the rapper expressed gratitude in having the case dropped, adding, “The truth, at the end of the day, still reigns supreme.”
For free, confidential help, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673 or visit rainn.org.
