At the end of June, Justin Bieber filed a $20 million defamation lawsuit against two anonymous women who made sexual assault allegations against him on Twitter. And on Thursday, a judge ruled that the pop star’s lawyers can subpoena the social media platform to find out the identities of those accusers.
According to Deadline, Bieber’s lawyer, Evan N. Spiegel, told Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Terry Green, “We just want to uncover who is behind these two accounts, and it may be the same person.” Spiegel also claimed that the two accusers did not do their “due diligence” in “fabricating” their allegations as they can all be easily disproven by paparazzi photos and eyewitnesses. Spiegel also called the accusations made by Twitter users @danielleglvn and @ItsnotKadi “factually impossible” in the initial lawsuit.
In the complaint filed, Bieber’s team also wrote that “Danielle claimed she was sexually assaulted at the Four Seasons Hotel on March 9, 2014, however, Bieber did not stay at that hotel in March 2014 and there are multiple witnesses and documentary evidence to dispute Danielle’s malicious lie.” Prior to filing the suit, Bieber produced screenshots of hotel receipts on Twitter that appear to contradict Danielle’s claims, showing that he actually stayed at an Airbnb the night of the alleged assault with his then girlfriend Selena Gomez.
In response to Kadi’s allegations which claim that on May 5, 2015, “around 2:30am, I was invited…to Bieber’s hotel (Langham hotel)” in NYC before being sexually assaulted, Bieber’s lawyers said that the singer “was actually at the Met Gala after-party with dozens of witnesses.” The lawsuit also cites several tweets in which Kadi says she’s never met Bieber.
Prior to the filing, the pop star wrote on Twitter, “Every claim of sexual abuse should be taken very seriously and this is why my response was needed. However this story is factually impossible and that is why I will be working with twitter and authorities to take legal action.”
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