Stephen A. Smith didn’t hold back while discussing his disgust at JAY-Z‘s friends for being passive during his rape lawsuit.
On Tuesday (Feb. 18), Smith uploaded a video to his YouTube reacting to Tony Buzbee‘s lawsuit, accusing Diddy and Hov of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl in 2000, being dismissed without prejudice.
Smith reminded viewers that he caught flack back in December 2024 when Jay’s name was initially added to the suit because the talking head didn’t believe the allegations thrown against the rapper. Now that the reports have been proven untrue, the sports journalist pressed everyone who seemingly preyed on Carter’s downfall to “be as loud” as they were before the legal dismissal. And the First Take host didn’t stop there; Smith even went so far as to call out Carter’s friends who “smiled in JAY-Z’s face” but seemingly disappeared when things got sticky.
“If y’all ever handle some stuff with me the way that some of these people handled stuff with JAY-Z y’all can kiss my a** and you go to hell,” Smith expressed. “Because at the very least somebody should be able to say, ‘I’ve known Stephen A. for 20, 25, 30, 40 years, nah I can’t see him doing that.’…You just gonna go silent and leave him hanging like that? Ain’t like he was silent. Ain’t like he was hiding and leaving others to talk for him. He spoke and said, ‘I’m innocent this isn’t true,’ and nobody could stand up and say, ‘Nah that brother that I know, I couldn’t see that.”
Smith then took aim at those in the media who may have actually believed Jay was innocent but wanted to gain numbers from the story. So, according to Stephen A., for “clickbait purposes,” these unnamed content creators presented the information as if Hov couldn’t have been innocent in order to rack up more views. The Queens native concluded that he has known Jay for 25 years and “never believed he was guilty of such a thing.”
In the aftermath of the lawsuit being dismissed, JAY-Z and Roc Nation released a statement regarding their “victory.” The Roc Nation boss recalled the “trauma” that his family faced and the constant “death threats” hurled at them, saying, “The frivolous, fictitious and appalling allegations have been dismissed. This civil suit was without merit and never going anywhere. The fictional tale they created was laughable if not for the seriousness of the claims. I would not wish this experience on anyone. The trauma that my wife, my children, loved ones, and I have endured can never be dismissed.”
Carter and his legal team have also hit Buzbee with a lawsuit for defamation, civil extortion, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
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