LOS ANGELES (CN) — A former fixer and purported “director of intelligence” for Ye, previously known as Kanye West, sued the rapper for retaliation and unpaid wages, spicing up his labor-law claims with a slue of sinister tasks he claims to have done in Ye’s employment.
The plaintiff, only identified as John Doe, said in a complaint filed Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court that Ye first hired him in December 2022 as deputy campaign director and that afterward his position changed to director of intelligence for Yeezy LLC, Ye’s company.
In this capacity, Doe says, he conducted various investigations, including of attorneys and parties that had sued Yeezy or Ye. Also, Doe claims, Ye tasked him with investigating the family of Ye’s former wife Kim Kardashian “and supposed various criminal links Ye believed they had with criminal enterprises, including alleged sex trafficking.”
In addition, a particularly notable task Ye asked him to do, Doe claims, was to hire private investigators to follow and tail his current wife, Bianca Censori, without her knowledge when she travelled alone to visit family in Australia.
The plaintiff says that he also brainstormed ideas to keep Ye in the news, including a discussion of getting involved with both national and international headlines, and that he fixed certain problems of Ye himself related to items that were stolen or lost and demanded further investigation.
Doe’s work for Ye came to an end earlier this year, he claims, after he received a call from an employee of Donda Academy, Ye’s unaccredited private Christian school, informing him about purported abuse of students.
Doe says that, after he shared this information with others at Yeezy, Ye called him almost immediately “to yell, curse and threaten” him with great bodily injury, including death, if he repeated what he had learned from the Donda employee.
“You’re fucking dead to me!” Ye told him, according to Doe.
In the the ensuing days and weeks, Doe claims, he received threats from Ye’s associates who were known “enforcers,” exacerbating the post traumatic stress disorder he suffers from as a military veteran.
“The stress and trauma caused by the threats, hostile work environment, and plaintiff’s exposure to illegal and unethical activities severely impacted his mental and emotional well-being,” Doe claims. “Plaintiff experienced panic attacks, anxiety, and severe emotional distress, which caused him to seek medical treatment and was placed in a facility to address his declining mental health.”
In his lawsuit, Doe claims retaliation, intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress, along with violations of California’s labor code. He seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
Doe is represented by Neama Rahmani and Ronald Zambrano of West Coast Trial Lawyers APLC in Los Angeles.
Attorneys who represent Ye in recent civil litigation in LA Superior Court didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
Founded in 2022 and named after Ye’s late mother, Donda Academy has been the target of at least four lawsuits, including by a group of Black, former teachers who accused the school of discrimination.
Perhaps the most eye-catching case was filed in April by Trevor Phillips, who said he was initially hired to work on Ye’s fashion line but soon found out that his work duties also included Donda Academy and other aspects of the controversial star’s life and business.
In that complaint, Phillips cited a number of bizarre and offensive comments Ye made to students and staff.
“Phillips, on several occasions, witnessed Kanye preach to his staff obscenities such as ‘the Jews are out to get me’ and ‘the Jews are stealing all my money,'” he wrote in his complaint. He said Ye also once told two students “he wanted them to shave their heads and that he intended to put a jail at the school — and that they could be locked in cages.”
Donda has also been sued by a former assistant principal and by a former security guard. The assistant principal asserted labor violations, while the security guard said he was ordered “to use physical force to remove paparazzi from the direct vicinity of Kanye and those in his company.”