Houston’s Fierce Superlawyer Who Battles Celebrities Like Diddy and Deshaun Watson — Here’s What Fuels His Relentless Fire!
In early July, a jury in a federal criminal trial found Diddy guilty of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution but acquitted him of more serious charges of racketeering and sex trafficking. The verdict was seen as a victory for Diddy, though he faces a potential sentence of ten years for each of the two counts on which he was convicted. And now he must contend with Buzbee and his hundred-plus lawsuits.
When Buzbee and I meet, it’s about a month after Buzbee filed a $50 million sexual assault and battery lawsuit on behalf of a Nevada woman against NFL Hall of Famer and media personality Shannon Sharpe. Sharpe, who temporarily stepped away from his duties at ESPN, denied the allegations and later resolved the lawsuit. (More on that below.)
At the same time, Buzbee himself was being sued by Jay-Z for extortion and defamation. The hip-hop titan has asserted that an anonymous woman, Buzbee, and another attorney knew that rape allegations against Jay-Z were false but proceeded with a lawsuit anyway. The “Jane Doe,” an Alabama woman, had accused Jay-Z in a civil suit of raping her alongside Combs when she was thirteen at a party in New York in 2000. She later acknowledged to NBC News that there were inconsistencies in her account but said that she stood by the allegations. In December, Jay-Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, issued a rare public statement denouncing the charges and Buzbee as an attorney and as a person and detailed how the attorney had sent a demand letter seeking confidential mediation.
“I have no idea how you have come to be such a deplorable human, Mr. Buzbee,” Jay-Z said in the statement, describing Buzbee as “an ambulance chaser in a cheap suit.”
Buzbee later withdrew from the case because he has not been admitted to practice law in the Southern District of New York, and in February the accuser dropped her lawsuit altogether. The case was dismissed without settlement. In his lawsuit against Buzbee and the woman, Jay-Z claimed that he suffered $190 million in business losses. (Alex Spiro, Jay-Z’s attorney, did not respond to interview requests.)
When asked about the lawsuit and the case involving his former client, it’s the one time Buzbee is not long-winded. “I never even had any thoughts about the guy!” he says about Jay-Z, noting that his former client’s case was vetted beforehand and calling the lawsuit against him “completely meritless.”
Adds Buzbee: “You can’t be sued for extortion for sending a request to sit down to have a mediation. That’s really all I can say.”
The court apparently sympathized with Buzbee’s point of view. On July 1, a judge in California dismissed the case. Buzbee immediately went on X to declare victory. “Yet another huge win!!” he wrote. He told TMZ that he would be seeking “a lot” of money for attorneys’ fees from Jay-Z’s lawyers for the cost and inconvenience of “defending against a meritless case.”
Like Jay-Z, Sharpe has fought back aggressively, claiming that Buzbee “targets Black men” for his own gain. “This is a shakedown,” Sharpe said in an April video statement posted on social media.
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