Everyone, I’m so glad you could join us for The Don Lemon Show. Thank you so much. You see that gentleman right there? I’m here.

He is here to speak to us about a story that everyone has been captivated by. And we’re not talking about the UnitedHealthcare Insurance CEO. We’re talking about Jay-Z and these allegations of rape against a 13-year-old girl dating back to 2000 after the VMAs in New York City.

I’m so glad that you’re here, Charles. Thank you very much. Charles from TNZ.

Charles, take us through this. This was an amended lawsuit. They amended the lawsuit that was previously filed by Tony Busby.

Correct. On behalf of one of his clients where Jay-Z was not named, but they amended it to put his name in. What is going on? Right.

Jay-Z thinks what’s going on here is that this is merely retaliation from Tony Busby. He thinks that’s the only reason his name was added to this lawsuit now because it was originally filed back in October. And when they filed it then, it named Diddy, of course, as one of the defendants.

And the allegation was that at this VMA afterparty, Diddy and an unnamed celebrity had raped this woman who at the time was 13 years old. Now, they also said that there was a third celebrity, a woman, who watched all of this go on. And they didn’t name anyone but Diddy.

What happened in the background, what we didn’t know, and now this has come forward. Jay-Z has said this and so has Tony Busby. Tony Busby sent a demand letter to Jay-Z saying, My client says you were the other person who was there.

We would like to meet with you and have a private mediation and avoid your name coming out in public. Well, Jay-Z saw that as extortion and, in fact, filed a lawsuit against Tony Busby. He filed it anonymously.

And I don’t know if you remember, this was back in early November, mid-November. We reported that there was a prominent man, that’s how we referred to himself in the lawsuit, who was suing Tony Busby. It was anonymous, just a prominent man.

It turns out that was Jay-Z. Did you guys have any idea back then, Charles, that it might be Jay-Z? I got to tell you, Don, when we got the lawsuit and we reported it, we put it up on the website and I was looking through it. And I turned to someone here and I was like, this might be Jay-Z.

And the only reason I thought it might be Jay-Z is the language that was used was so defiant. It sounded very much like someone who said, you’re messing with the wrong person. I’m not the one who’s just going to roll over and give you, write a check to you.

And there’s something in the language of it that made me think this might be Jay-Z. Now, we actually contacted people connected to Jay-Z at the time and they denied it and said, no, no, no, that’s, you know, we don’t know what you’re talking about. And obviously he didn’t want his name to come out attached to it at that point.

Well, now they refiled the lawsuit on Sunday and now they’ve added Jay-Z’s name. And now it says there what they’re alleging is that he was actually not just watching, but he was involved and did commit this rape along with Diddy. That response from him is really quite something where he says basically he’s calling it extortion, extortion.

And he says you’ve messed with the wrong guy. I have the response right here, but I just want to read just a little bit of it. Charles, I want you to respond to this, where he says, hang on, here it is.

Sorry, let me get my stuff together. He said, my lawyer received a blackmail attempt. I mean, he came right out and said a blackmail attempt, called a demand letter from a lawyer named Tony Busby.

What he had calculated was the nature of these allegations and the public scrutiny would make me want to settle. No, sir. It had the opposite effect.

It made me want to expose you for the fraud you are in a very public fashion. So no, I will not give you one red penny. And it gets worse from there.

He’s going to Tony Busby. We are in an age, you’ve been doing this. This is what you do.

Usually stars or high profile people will say, we’re going, we’re not going to, you know, litigate this in public. We’re going to do it in a courtroom. We deny no more statements from us.

That’s the boilerplate response that you get. It usually comes from an attorney or a publicist. This was personal and you could tell it was written by Jay-Z.

This was not, it was in his voice. And I got to tell you, just from covering him over the years, it was that tone that you saw in that response that he put out on Sunday. That’s what I saw in the lawsuit that was filed back in November that made me feel like this was Jay-Z who had filed the lawsuit against Tony Busby.

It is extraordinary that he would respond that way and pretty quickly. I think the other thing that we got to mention here is that this was not a surprise to Jay-Z. Clearly that Busby was going to add his name to this lawsuit because he had a response ready.

I think he knew it was coming. And I think they also, on Jay-Z’s side, they think that it was coordinated. They added his name to this lawsuit on Sunday knowing that on Monday night there was a premiere for Mufasa here in Hollywood where Beyonce and Blue Ivy are in the movie.

So everyone expected them to be there and Jay-Z would normally be there. And I think what Jay-Z’s people, not I think, I know that they think Busby coordinated this in an attempt to embarrass him and maybe make him not go to the premiere, maybe even stop Beyonce and Blue Ivy from going. As it turns out, the whole family went because, as you heard in that statement, you just said Jay-Z is defiant, says I didn’t do this, I have nothing to hide.

And furthermore, he took it another step, Don, in that statement. He said if this had actually happened to your client, you should want whoever did it to her to be in prison. So why don’t you file a criminal complaint against me? There should be criminal charges for whoever did this.

Let me ask you this. I’ll get to that. So why would he not want to go to the premiere? Was that something he was holding over his head trying to get leverage? I think he’s embarrassed.

I think he was trying to embarrass him. That’s, yeah. Yeah, oh, right, right.

Okay, because he had already become public. Do you think it was a coordinated effort on behalf of the Carters? Well, remember, Jay-Z’s name wasn’t attached to this until Sunday. And was that before or after the premiere? The premiere was Monday night.

Okay, yeah, that’s what I meant. So it was sort of come out before. All right, great.

So was this a coordinated effort on Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s part to show unity and that they were together and show up? Because you know Beyoncé is, you know, everything is coordinated. She doesn’t usually do red carpets. They release the photos themselves.

I think she would have done this red carpet anyway because Blue Ivy is in the movie as well. And it was a big moment for her. So I think she was planning, I know she was planning to go.

And it was expected to be there. I think what Tony Busby, the reason he filed this on Sunday, is he wanted to either force Jay-Z to not go. Because as you know, what normally happens when celebrities are suddenly involved in a controversy, they don’t go out to events.

Because they don’t want questions. They don’t want photos that bring up the news cycle again. So typically they wouldn’t go.

And clearly Tony Busby, if that was his plan in filing it on Sunday, he miscalculated because Jay-Z decided he was just going to go full bore against him and say, I got nothing to hide and I’m going out with my family no matter what you want to accuse me of. Charles, I want to ask you about what you just mentioned moments ago where you talked about saying, why didn’t you file criminal charges? And he said something like, look, wouldn’t you think that something that was this heinous and this egregious, why wouldn’t you want to file criminal charges? Does this have anything to do with the statute of limitations? And look, excuse my ignorance on this, was this filed in Los Angeles or in New York? It was filed in New York. Well, the civil lawsuit was filed in, hang on, I think the civil lawsuit was filed in federal court.

But the statute of limitations would be in New York State. And there are no statute of limitations for first degree rape in New York State. And based on the allegations that were put in the lawsuit, this would be, if they were to bring criminal charges, would be first degree rape.

So there is no statute of limitations. So I can’t imagine Jay-Z would put that in a statement without his lawyers knowing, look, there is no statute of limitations. So if you’re going to call him out this way, you’re going to dare him know that it’s possible that they will file a criminal complaint.

It doesn’t mean that the DA would bring charges. The other thing you got to look at is, and by the way, Tony Busby has since told us that his client is considering that. He said it is up to his client ultimately, but there is a chance that she would go to NYPD and file a criminal complaint.

Now, investigating a rape 24 years later, finding witnesses, finding evidence would be extremely difficult for the authorities. But we’ll see if it goes that way. Let me ask you this.

So do you think, I mean, it would be really silly is the word or a miscalculation for Jay-Z to put that in a response if he did not believe, if there was some evidence to the fact that this did happen. What do you make of him going this far in his response and daring, if you will, it seems like he’s daring to me, daring Tony Busby to file a criminal complaint? Yeah, I mean, look, let’s face it. He’s not only calling out Tony Busby, but, and he was careful, I think, in the statement to not really go after the alleged victim because you don’t want- But asking the victim to reveal herself.

Yes, but he did file a motion asking the judge to have the victim, the alleged victim reveal her identity. And the reason they said is, look, if you’re going to sully my name and my reputation that I’ve spent my whole career building, I need to know who I’m going up against in court so I can defend myself properly. Because the alleged victim was 13 at the time, I don’t know.

I think that’s a big mitigating factor. And I think the judge would be inclined to not force her to reveal. But we’ll see how that goes.

But you’re right, for Jay-Z to go that hard against not only the alleged victim, but also Busby, it makes you think he really doesn’t have anything to hide. Now, look, we don’t know. These are allegations.

I wasn’t there. I can’t say whether the victim, the alleged victim, is telling the truth here or if Jay-Z is telling the truth, that’s what the courts are for. But clearly, if the intent of going so strong in his response was to make people think he really doesn’t have anything to hide, I think Jay-Z wins with that because that’s got to be the reaction most people have.

On the other hand, it’s yet another allegation involving Diddy. And as you know, when these things pile up, what happens in the court of public opinion, people start to go, they can’t all be making it up. Some of it has to be true.

And if some of it is true, then people start to believe, you know, it doesn’t take more than one of these cases to be true to ruin Diddy’s reputation, and in this case, Jay-Z’s, if it is true. Yeah, Jay-Z threatened to, I think he threatened to at least take legal action against Piers Morgan when he had Jaguar Wright on the show. And so now he’s saying, hey, bring it on here.

I’m not going to give you any money. What’s next, Charles? Are we waiting for the judge to rule on revealing, possibly revealing the victim’s name? The revealing will be one thing. The other thing that’s happened since Sunday is that there is now an all-out war between Jay-Z’s attorneys and Tony Busby.

And, you know, actually Jay-Z’s attorneys filed a declaration in federal court with the judge on this case to let the judge know that they had been contacted, Jay-Z’s attorneys, by a woman who on Monday night, they said this woman called their offices and told them that she had had contact with Tony Busby. And that Busby’s associates tried to coerce her into making up allegations against Diddy, tried to coerce her into saying that she was drugged, tried to coerce her into saying she was raped. She insisted what she had contacted them about had nothing to do with Diddy, but they were trying to force her into that.

So Jay-Z’s attorneys wanted the judge to know, hey, this is the kind of thing that Busby is allegedly doing according to this woman. We just think that that’s, you know, unethical and we want you to know about it, judge. Busby, for his part, has fired back and said, that’s ridiculous.

Yes, we get lots of calls from tipsters and from people who think they have a case, but we didn’t take this woman’s case because we didn’t believe she had a case. And, you know, he said, I don’t know who the person is because they didn’t reveal her name, but he thinks that this is just Jay-Z trying to muddy him. Tony Busby does, thinks that they are trying to muddy him because they’re trying to avoid the allegations from his clients, which obviously Busby believes to be true.

We know you have to get a show on the air. So just quickly, does Busby have that reputation? The reputation of making things up? Yeah, basically, because Jay-Z’s calling him an ambulance chaser. That’s what he’s saying.

Yeah, Jay-Z did call him an ambulance chaser. I have heard that phrase, the ambulance chaser. I’ve heard it mentioned with Tony Busby before.

He is very open about the fact that, you know, he told us months ago that he was sending these demand letters to celebrities. And he says it’s not extortion. He says this is the way the game is played.

You offer them an opportunity to have a mediation. Now, he always qualifies by saying, I just want to sit down and have a mediation. I said nothing about money.

But let’s be honest, what is the mediation going to be about? But he makes the point that in the letter, we never ask for money. So, look, is he ambulance chasing? Some people have called him that. I always say this.

This is what I’ve been saying to a lot of people about this. That even if you want to question Tony Busby and whether or not he is an ethical attorney, you can do that. But that doesn’t mean that his client is unethical.

So you could have someone who has an actual claim, has an actual, a real allegation. Just because their lawyer is whatever you want to call them doesn’t mean that they’re lying. So what it really comes down to is you can have all this sniping about the lawyers.

This comes down to the allegation from the alleged victim and how the defendants, what’s their side of it? Just TMZ Sports, any news on what this means for the Super Bowl? Because Roc Nation produces the Super Bowl, right? The halftime show. And Kendrick Lamar is performing. Any news on that? Are they going to go through with it? That is going to go through 100%.

Jay-Z doesn’t appear on stage. The NFL is not cutting ties with Roc Nation. So that’s still going forward.

Kendrick Lamar will be performing at the Super Bowl halftime show. And Roc Nation will be producing it. And Roc Nation is producing until… Look, could there be new developments where suddenly the NFL felt uncomfortable with that relationship? Possibly.

But this case isn’t going to be resolved by the time the Super Bowl happens anyway. Charles, you’re the best man. Thank you very much for watching TMZ Live and TMZ, the edited show that you guys put on.

So we really appreciate you joining us. Great information. If you get anything, let us know.

Thank you, Charles. All right. Thank you, Tom.

So that was Charles Laboutier. I always get his name. I always say his name.

I mispronounce it. But interesting developments as it relates to the case of Jay-Z and what’s going on. As everyone has been speculating about whether these charges are real, folks have been asking about the Super Bowl.

That is the first information that I’ve gotten that says it is going to go on. TMZ and then TMZ Sports, they have a sports department over there as well. And they have been, from their reporting, it looks like that this Roc Nation will produce the halftime performance at the Super Bowl, the halftime show with Kendrick Lamar.

So it’s very interesting for me, at least, to hear the information about that, the information about Tony Busby, the new information that we just got from Charles, that there is someone who also contacted Busby, allegedly, and said that Busby wanted them to act in a way that they were not comfortable with, somehow making up allegations, again, this is according to TMZ and Charles, that they weren’t comfortable with, that they weren’t true, that would really be detrimental to Jay-Z and also to Diddy. He says that the two sides are going after each other, Busby, who is a lawyer, and then Jay-Z’s lawyers. So Charles is right.

This is not over yet. This will play out way longer, way past the 2024-2025 Super Bowl. And it will not be resolved by then and possibly won’t be resolved for years.

And as you heard him say, there is another celebrity yet to be named in this particular filing. Who knows if there are going to be other filings and other people coming forward. But in this particular one, there is another unnamed celebrity.

That unnamed celebrity is believed to be a woman, reportedly, allegedly, a woman who watched, supposedly watched all of this while it was happening after the VMAs or the Video Music Awards in New York City back in 2000. And remember, these are 24-year-old, these allegations, this allegation is 24 years old, meaning it happened 24 years ago. Newly brought to light through court documents.

But this happened, allegedly, 24, allegedly happened 24 years ago. And there are some, many as a matter of fact, who are questioning the validity of the charges because the victim, alleged victim, had not come forward. As Charles stated there, according to Charles, there is no statute of limitations in New York as it relates to first degree rape.

So anyone can bring charges at any time. But something that long ago, I spoke to a reporter, someone who reports on this earlier. And they said, and an attorney reportedly said, also, there is no reason to believe, there’s little reason to believe the veracity of these charges because of the length of time from folks’ memory.

And also because of some other underlying information or details in the charges. But this is fascinating to play out. Look, we don’t know what is going to happen.

We don’t know if any of this is true or not. Again, these are all allegations. They are, they have yet to be adjudicated.

But Jay-Z is coming out strong in his defense. And usually you do not see responses like this from high-profile people, especially celebrities. They would prefer this to blow over.

Especially in a news cycle where things play out very quickly these days. The news cycle moves very quickly. The shelf life for a story may be 24 to 48 hours sometimes.

I doubt it would be in this case. But usually it’s not to pour gasoline on the fire, not to give oxygen. But in this case, the response from Jay-Z is so strong.

He’s saying, you know what, I didn’t do it. And what you’re trying to do, he’s calling it extortion. And saying what you’re trying to do is not going to work.

It has the opposite effect. I’m not going to give you a penny. So we’ll see what all develops.

We’ll see how this unfolds. Let me know what you think in the comments. I’d be interested to know.

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