Mariah Carey has been in and out of court over the past year in her legal battle against her former assistant. Mariah filed a lawsuit against her former assistant on claims that she was being blackmailed, essentially. She made accusations that Lianna “Azarian” Shakhnazarian had visual recordings of Carey “engaging in intimate acts.” Following Carey’s decision to let go of Azariana, Carey claimed that Lianna threatened to leak the videos if Carey didn’t cough up $8M.
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According to Page Six, Carey’s attorney, Casey Laffey, said in court papers that “Shakhnazarian has tried to avoid liability by intentionally destroying at least three categories of relevant evidence.” It’s still unclear what Laffey meant since a lot of the document was redacted. Laffey added that Azarian “has irrevocably frustrated Carey’s ability to determine whether Shakhnazarian transmitted the recordings to other third-parties,” the court documents say.
Now that the evidence no longer exists, according to Laffey, Carey demands permission to make copies of the contents on Azarian’s phone in order to make sure she doesn’t “withhold or destroy.” Carey also stated that she can’t really fight Azarian’s “sole” defense that she had permission to take the videos of Carey.
“Ms. Shakhnazarian did nothing wrong. It is sad that Ms. Carey and her team are more concerned about PR than the truth coming out. I wish them well,” Shakhnazarian’s lawyer, Tobin Lanzetta, said.
