A PR expert and lawyer break down Jay-Z’s “unorthodox” response to being accused of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl in a civil case against Diddy.
Jay-Z’s response to the rape accusations against him is missing something, according to one crisis-PR expert.
The “99 Problems” singer — whose real name is Shawn Carter — was accused in a civil lawsuit Sunday of drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl at an MTV Video Music Awards after-party alongside Sean “Diddy” Combs in 2000.
Carter responded to the “heinous” allegations hours later in a statement posted on his company Roc Nation’s X account, calling the accuser’s attorney, Tony Buzzbee, “deplorable” and saying he engaged in “a blackmail attempt.”
“Whoever would commit such a crime against a minor should be locked away, would you not agree?” the statement reads, in part. “These alleged victims would deserve real justice if that were the case.”
Still, the statement doesn’t include “a flat unmistakable denial that he’d ever engaged in behavior like that in this case or otherwise”, said Evan Nierman, the CEO of crisis-PR firm Red Banyan.
“I think Jay-Z was strong in pointing out the heinous nature of the crimes and that he views them as unconscionable”, Nierman said. “But I would’ve liked to have seen a little bit more of a flat denial.”
The allegations against Carter stem from one of the slew of civil sexual assault lawsuits filed against Combs, who’s in a Brooklyn jail while awaiting trial on separate criminal sex trafficking charges. Combs has denied the accusations against him.
In the original lawsuit, filed in October, the anonymous Jane Doe plaintiff from Alabama accused Combs of raping her at a party in New York City as two other unnamed celebrities watched. The stars were only identified in the civil lawsuit as “Celebrity A” and “Celebrity B.”
The updated lawsuit filed Sunday identifies Carter as “Celebrity A.”
The other celebrity was described as a “female” but has otherwise not been identified in court documents.
Attorneys for Carter and Combs did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider. A day after Carter’s statement was published, his lawyer, Alex Spiro, more forcefully denied the allegations in a court filing.
“For the avoidance of doubt, Mr. Carter is entirely innocent”, he wrote. “This is a shakedown.”A PR expert says Jay-Z’s statement had ‘bravado’
In his social media statement, Carter took aim at Buzbee, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiff, and said that his lawyer “received a blackmail attempt” to pressure him into settling out of court.
