So, uh, OK. Where to begin with this Dallas Cowboys story?
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I won't bury the lede: A 26-year-old woman says she believes Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is her father. This past Monday, she filed a defamation suit against the billionaire owner.
In her lawsuit, Alexandra Davis — an aide to U.S. Rep. Ronny Jackson and who previously worked in the same role in the Trump White House — alleges that Jones, a Cowboys spokesperson and an Arkansas-based friend of Jones "initiated a deliberate plan" to portray the billionaire's "own daughter ... as an 'extortionist' and a 'shakedown artist' whose motivation was money and greed," according to ESPN.
Last year, Davis filed a separate suit alleging Jones paid her $375,000 and set up two trust accounts to conceal his identity as her father. This ties into the new lawsuit because, in the weeks leading up to the initial filing, Davis says Jones and his representatives publicly attacked her "based knowingly on false statements and accusations."
More Details About The Lawsuit
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The current lawsuit was filed in federal court in Texarkana, Texas. It names three defendants: Jones, Donald T. Jack Jr. (Jones' friend) and Jim Wilkinson, an outside communications consultant for Jones.
In terms of what Davis seeks, no amount is specified for 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 daughter an 'extortionist' merely to make his public image less despicable by attempting to discredit Plaintiff's reputation and character in the public eye."
Davis told ESPN this past Monday that the first lawsuit from March 2022 had one goal — for Jones to admit he was her father. She also wants to be released from the confidentiality agreement her mother involved her in when she was born. Jones has been ordered to take a paternity test as of December 2022, but it was delayed until around May 2023.
"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."
Jones, all other defendants, and Jones' lawyer, Levi G. McCathern II, have yet to comment on the situation.
Davis and her lawyer, Bergman, have said this has nothing to do with money. But according to Jones' spokesperson, Bergman said, "If you want this just to go away, it's going to cost you Zeke [Elliott] or Dak [Prescott] money." That claim has yet to be substantiated, though.
Also, in her lawsuit, Davis contends that Wilkinson and Jack called her an "extortionist" in an ESPN article on March 31, 2022, where Jack said he and Davis had dinner and at one point she handed him a letter asking Jones for $20 million. However, Davis didn't deny this, saying that it was a "written exercise" advised by her therapist to vent her feelings.
"The purpose and content of this writing was an attempt by Plaintiff to share her anguish about the lack of relationship with her father and plead with Defendant Jones for a simple meeting of any kind," the lawsuit states.
Davis' lawyers said a Google search for "Alexandra Davis extortionist" netted more than 4,000,000 results.
"From the beginning, Ms. Davis has never demanded a single dollar in return for not seeking to establish Mr. Jones' parentage," Bergman said in a statement. "Likewise, Ms. Davis has never worked in concert with any parties, including those involved in Mr. Jones' myriad other public and private scandals. Ms. Davis initially sought a quiet acknowledgment. However, Mr. Jones and his team forced this very private matter into the public arena."
To add to the intrigue of this, Jack said that Jones had paid $3 million to Davis, paid for her tuition to Southern Methodist University and gave her a $70,000 Range Rover on her 16th birthday.
In her statement Monday issued by her lawyers, Davis stated that knowledge of Jones being her father "was known only by attorneys, therapists, my mother, me, and my father, Jerry Jones. This life was the limited space I had to cope with the realization that my own father would rather use the money to silence, conceal, and intimidate me than know his daughter."
It's rumored that Jones courted Davis' mother, Cynthia Spencer Davis, in 1995 when she was a ticket counter attendant for American Airlines in Little Rock, Arkansas.
A Small Side Story
AP Photo/David Goldman. File
As a side note, the lawsuit also cites "others." The "others" refers to four Cowboys cheerleaders who accused Richard Dalrymple, a team executive, of voyeurism in their locker room in 2015. In February 2022, the Cowboys paid a $2.4 million "secret" settlement to the women, according to ESPN.
Dalrymple denied the allegations but resigned a week before the February 2022 story was released.
Needless to say, Jones and the Cowboys have a lot to deal with as we approach the 2023 NFL Draft, in which the Cowboys hold the No. 26 overall pick.
