After JAY-Z’s attorney, Alex Spiro, sued to force the identity of the woman accusing his client and Diddy of sexual assault in 2000, a judge has ruled that she does not have to reveal herself at this time but may have to at a later date if the case goes on.
According to CBS News, U.S. District Judge Analisa Torres responded to Spiro’s attempt to have the accuser reveal her identity by denying the defendant’s request on Dec. 26. She did state that if the case was to move forward for discovery purposes, she might have to remove the accuser’s anonymous status. Revealing the accuser’s name in the future would allow defense lawyers to collect facts necessary to prepare for trial. Torres also said there is “substantial interest” from the public.
The accuser, who stated she was 13 years old at the time of the alleged crime, told her attorney, Tony Buzbee, that she made her way to the 2000 MTV Music Awards ceremony from her residence in Rochester, New York. The accuser said a now-deceased friend drove her five hours and dropped her off before she allegedly met up with the two moguls. She claimed they sexually assaulted her at an afterparty at what she described as a white house.
Spiro asked the judge to remove JAY-Z from the lawsuit as the rapper denied it took place. The attorney cited an interview that the plaintiff gave NBC News, which he said showed that she gave “glaring inconsistencies and outright impossibilities” in her recollection of that night. He listed several of them, including her claim of watching the actual awards shows from a jumbotron outside the VMAs, but he has since proven that there was no jumbotron at that ceremony. Spiro also stated that even the accuser’s father was perplexed as she claimed after the alleged assault that she contacted her father to come pick her up, and he drove her back five hours to Rochester. He admitted that he did not remember that taking place, stating he would have remembered driving five hours.
In the interview, the woman did admit to the many inconsistencies in her story.
However, in her denial, Judge Torres chastised Spiro. She felt that Spiro’s “relentless filing of combative motions containing inflammatory language and ad hominem attacks” against Buzbee were “inappropriate, a waste of judicial resources, and a tactic unlikely to benefit his client.”
She said Spiro has submitted a “litany of letters and motions attempting to impugn the character of Plaintiff’s lawyer, many expounding on the purported ‘urgency’ of this case.”
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