26-year-old Alexandra Davis who claimed the Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is her father has now dragged him to the law court for defamation. And from the details via ESPN;
A 26-year-old woman on Monday filed a federal defamation suit against Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, a longtime Arkansas friend and a Cowboys spokesman, alleging the three men “initiated a deliberate plan” to portray the billionaire’s “own daughter … as an ‘extortionist’ and a ‘shakedown artist’ whose motivation was money and greed.”
Alexandra Davis, a Congressional aide, sought recognition as Jones’ daughter in a lawsuit filed last year that indicated Jones paid her $375,000 and set up two trusts to conceal that he was Davis’ biological father. The new lawsuit states that in the weeks after Davis’ March 2022 filing, Jones and his representatives waged a public campaign attacking her character, “based knowingly on false statements and accusations.”
Davis’ latest lawsuit, filed in Texarkana, Texas, federal court, names three defendants: Jones; his longtime Arkansas lawyer and friend, Donald T. Jack Jr.; and Jones’ outside communications consultant, Jim Wilkinson. Davis is seeking an unspecified amount in actual and punitive damages.
“Not once did Defendant Jones or any of his agents ever deny that Plaintiff was Defendant Jones’ daughter,” Davis’ Dallas lawyers, Jay K. Gray and Andrew A. Bergman, wrote in the 22-page defamation complaint. “Instead, Defendant Jones chose the avenue of calling his own daughter an ‘extortionist’ merely to make his own public image less despicable by attempting to discredit Plaintiff’s reputation and character in the public eye.”
“I have been falsely accused of a ‘shakedown’ and ‘extortion.’ In reality, I am a daughter who simply wants to acknowledge her father without fear of retribution. I will not stand by and let my father’s actions or words define me or my future.”
In her initial lawsuit filed last March, Davis asked a court to be recognized as Jones’ daughter and to be released from the confidentiality agreement her mother agreed to when she was a baby. In December, the court ordered Jones to submit to a paternity test that has been delayed until at least May.
Since last spring, both sides have traded accusations, in court and in public, about each other’s motives. Davis and her lawyers have insisted she is not motivated by money. But Jones’ spokesman told ESPN last year that Bergman, one of Davis’ lawyers, told McCathern in a meeting: “If you want this just to go away, it’s going to cost you Zeke [Ezekiel Elliott] or Dak [Prescott] money.” Bergman has insisted he has never asked for a dollar to settle the case.
Last March, Wilkinson told ESPN, “This whole saga and series of recent attacks amounts to nothing more than an amateurish coordination among various parties to try to shake down the Jones family for money.”
Davis now works as an aide to U.S. Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, and prior to that, she worked as an aide in the Trump White House. She has said nothing publicly about her allegation except for a series of statements released by her lawyers.
Jerry Jones was alleged to have paid $375,000 to Davis’ mother, Cynthia Spencer Davis, whom the lawsuit states was courted by Jones in 1995 when she was working at the American Airlines ticket counter in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Alexandra Davis has said that she’d had to carry the secret that Jones was her father her entire life. At the age of 1, she said she was bound to secrecy by a confidentiality agreement signed by her mother with Jones and Jack, the longtime friend of Jones. Jack has said that Jones has paid nearly $3 million to Davis, including her full tuition at Southern Methodist University and a $70,000 Range Rover on her 16th birthday.
This is an interesting saga and I hope to see where it ends.
