Mariah Carey’s former assistant has countered the singer’s recent blackmail lawsuit by filing her own legal action case around wrongful termination and sexual harassment.
In her suit, the music icon claims Lianna Azarian secretly recorded her doing “embarrassing” things and then threatened to release the clips unless Carey paid her $8 million. Carey claims she was paying Azarian as much as $327,000 a year, but ended up firing her in November 2017, and that’s when she claims the blackmail began. Carey says Azarian demanded $8 million and if she didn’t get it she’d release videos and other damaging information.
On Wednesday, Azarian responded by filing her own lawsuit against Carey, her former manager Stella Bulochnikov, who just settled a suit with Carey, and other parties. Azarian is claiming a host of allegations including wrongful termination, retaliation, failure to prevent discrimination and harassment, sexual harassment, emotional distress, and battery.
In the lawsuit, Azarian claims Carey’s former manager Bulochnikov committed various acts of abuse against her, including slapping her butt and breasts, urinating on her, tackling her to the ground, sitting on her and calling her a “fu*king Armenian whore.” Azarian also claimed Mariah either had knowledge of, or witnessed, the alleged incidents and did nothing about them, and when she reported Bulochnikov’s behavior directly to Mariah she was fired.
Additionally, she accused Carey of physical, emotional and psychological abuse.
After Carey’s lawsuit became public, her representative issued a statement calling Azarian a “grifter and extortionist.”
“This new year welcomes Mariah’s continued efforts to clean the trash from her life,” the statement read. “Because her threats and bad acts are too great to be ignored, Mariah has been compelled to file a lawsuit against her. Given that the evidence against this former assistant is vast and deplorable, we anticipate a victorious resolution.”
The former assistant’s lawyer Mark Quigley called the allegations made against his client “baseless” and said they were an attempt to deflect attention away from her own legal action. He added, “My client never did anything she wasn’t specifically asked to do.”
Mariah and Bulochnikov parted ways in late 2017. In April, the manager launched a lawsuit claiming she was owed more than $100 million in commissions, and they recently reached an undisclosed settlement.
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