Rapper Tip “T.I.” Harris and his wife, R&B singer Tameka “Tiny” Harris have denied accusations of drugging, kidnapping and sex abuse made by as many as 30 women.
Over the weekend, New York-based attorney Tyrone A. Blackburn sent letters to federal prosecutors in two states calling for a criminal investigation into the allegations.
In the letters, Blackburn accused the Atlanta power couple of “a myriad of allegations of forced drugging, kidnapping, rape, and intimidation in at least two states, including California and Georgia.”
Blackburn filed a defamation lawsuit against T.I. and Tiny on behalf of Atlanta entrepreneur Sabrina Peterson, who previously accused T.I. of putting a gun to her head during an argument in 2009.
T.I. has retained his friend, high-powered criminal defense attorney Steve Sadow to represent him and his wife.
On Monday, Sadow said in a statement that T.I. and Tiny “deny in the strongest possible terms these unsubstantiated and baseless allegations” and he called the lawsuit a “shakedown” for money.
At a virtual press conference on Monday, Blackburn said the anonymous women aren’t looking for money.
“They’re seeking justice… These women have never put forth a request for money. They’ve never asked for money. Steve Sadow, maybe he misspoke… I didn’t ask him for a dollar and from what I got from the conversations we had from the emails, they were very, very interested in killing this story and these claims. They didn’t want this to come out.”
Rumors of T.I. and Tiny’s drug-fueled orgies have circulated on blogs and social media for years.
T.I. himself confirmed the rumors in a video response to Peterson’s allegations in January.
“Uh, what we not going to do is open up the door to my bedroom,” he said in the 8-minute video uploaded to Instagram.
“But I will say this, whatever we ever have done, has been done with consensual adults who into what we into and like what we like. If we want something, we know exactly where to go get it. We’ve never forced anybody, we’ve never drugged anybody against their will, we’ve never held anybody against their will. We’ve never made anybody do anything. We never sexually trafficked anything. I ain’t never raped nobody, never raped nobody.”
In a recent episode of T.I.’s podcast series, “ExpediTIously,” the soft-spoken Sadow said he draws the line at representing sexual predators, since those cases are the most difficult to defend morally.
Watch T.I.’s interview with Sadow below.
