Billionaire Jay-Z says Tony Buzbee invented a death threat to make his accuser drop her lawsuit

Jay-Z has filed an amended complaint in the Southern District of New York accusing Houston attorney Tony Buzbee and his co-counsel David Fortney of fabricating a death threat against his own client to pressure her into dropping her lawsuit and to conceal Buzbee's unauthorized practice in federal court, as Jay-Z seeks $190 million in damages and triple that figure if the court finds fraud on the tribunal was committed.

The filing, made public on Thursday, lays out what Jay-Z's legal team describes as the central act of deception in the entire saga. According to the amended complaint, Fortney sat down with Jane Doe, the anonymous woman who had accused Jay-Z and Sean Combs of sexual assault at an MTV Video Music Awards afterparty in 2000 when she was 13, and told her that Jay-Z had threatened to kill her and that continuing the lawsuit was too dangerous. Jay-Z's lawyers say no such threat was ever made. "Of course, no such threats had ever been made," the complaint states. "Rather, Buzbee and Fortney were desperate to withdraw the false case or face punishment in court for their actions in filing a false pleading without Buzbee even being admitted in the SDNY."

The complaint identifies the specific legal problem that made the fabricated death threat necessary. Buzbee filed pleadings in the SDNY without being admitted to practice in that district. When US District Judge Ronnie Abrams flagged the issue in March 2025, noting that Buzbee was prohibited from practicing in the Southern District, Buzbee faced potential sanctions and embarrassment across the more than 20 other cases he had pending in the same court. The fabricated death threat, Jay-Z's lawyers argue, was the mechanism by which Buzbee persuaded Doe to voluntarily dismiss her case on the same day he was confronted with the admission problem, removing the immediate legal threat to his ability to continue operating in federal court.

The timing detail Jay-Z's team considers most damning is this: Buzbee sent a demand letter to Jay-Z's lawyers on November 5, 2024. He did not formally sit down with Doe, his own client, for the first time until December 9, 2024, five weeks later. He was seeking money from Jay-Z before he had ever met the woman he was supposed to be representing.

Jay-Z is seeking $190 million in damages representing lost income, denied credit and lost contracts. His team documented specific financial losses in the amended complaint, including a $55 million personal credit line that was denied following the public allegations, a $115 million loan to Roc Nation that was blocked and contracts in the sports and entertainment sectors worth at least $20 million that were either revoked or never materialised. The complaint also invokes New York Judiciary Law Section 487, which allows for treble damages, meaning tripling of any award, when an attorney is found to have deceived a court or a party with intent to cause harm. If that provision succeeds, the total damages sought would reach $570 million.

Jay-Z told ABC News that the allegations had left him feeling heartbroken and filled with uncontrollable anger. He has described 2026 as "all offense" and made clear he had no intention of settling. "My lawyer received a blackmail attempt, called a demand letter, from a lawyer named Tony Buzbee," he said in an earlier public statement. "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."

Buzbee has denied the allegations in public statements and court filings, contending Jay-Z's lawsuits aim to intimidate and bully his former client and asserting the claims lack legal merit. A separate $25 million defamation lawsuit has been filed against Buzbee in federal court in Texas by Marcy Croft, a lawyer who has worked extensively with Team Roc, Jay-Z's philanthropic arm, who alleges Buzbee launched a smear campaign against her accusing her of illegal client solicitation, bribery, intimidation and obstruction of justice.

Discovery in the SDNY case is scheduled to run through December 31, 2026, with initial disclosures due June 3. The case is before US District Judge Analisa Torres, to whom the matter was transferred after an Alabama judge declined to dismiss it but agreed it was not the right venue.

Jay-Z's net worth is estimated at approximately $2.5 billion, built across music, Roc Nation's entertainment and sports representation business, Armand de Brignac champagne, D'Usse cognac and other investments. The Buzbee case has become the most consequential legal battle of his public life, one he has framed not as a threat to be managed but as a wrong to be corrected at whatever cost the litigation requires.