Justin Bieber is dropping a defamation lawsuit he filed in 2020 against two women who accused him of sexual assault.
Lawyers for the Canadian singer filed a request for dismissal in Los Angeles County Superior Court last Friday, according to Billboard. It was not clear if there a settlement was reached and Bieber’s lawyer Evan Spiegel told NBC News only that the pop star “has decided to move on.”
The case was tentatively set for trial in May.
Bieber filed the lawsuit against women identified only as Danielle and Kadi on social media, seeking $10 million U.S. each. He claimed Danielle’s allegation of sexual assault in 2014 and Kadi’s allegation of one in 2015 were “despicable, blatantly false, fabricated [and] defamatory.”
Kadi was later identified as Khadidja Djibrine, whose story Bieber’s reps had blasted as “a poor, but damaging, fabrication.”
Danielle deleted the Twitter account she had evidently set up solely to share her claims. She alleged she was sexually assaulted by Bieber on March 9, 2014 while he was in Austin with then-girlfriend Selena Gomez.
Djibrine claimed she was assaulted on the night of May 4, 2015 in a washroom of a suite at the Langham Hotel in New York City.
Before filing the lawsuit in 2020, Bieber tweeted: "Rumours are rumours but sexual abuse is something I don’t take lightly … Every claim of sexual abuse should be taken very seriously ... However this story is factually impossible.”