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Credit: Bravo
Ariana Madix claims Rachel “Raquel” Leviss is trying to punish her for the backlash she received following her affair with Tom Sandoval.
Just days after Sandoval, 41, filed his own response to Raquel’s revenge porn lawsuit against them, accusing his former flame of using the case to “rebrand herself as the victim” and “extend her fame,” Ariana, 38, is firing back as well, insisting that she never sent or shared Raquel’s NSFW FaceTime videos with others.
In court documents obtained by Page Six on April 29, Ariana’s lawyers alleged that Raquel, 29, “seeks to punish” and “blame Ms. Madix for the negative reaction [Leviss] received as a result of her affair with” Sandoval, and that her lawsuit is “an abuse of the legal process” and “does not seek to vindicate any cognizable rights.”
Instead, the attorneys continued, her lawsuit against Ariana and Sandoval attempts to prevent free speech.
Ariana wants Raquel’s lawsuit against her, which accuses her and Sandoval of revenge porn, intentional infliction of emotional distress, eavesdropping, and invasion of privacy, to be “stricken” down, and she also requests that she “be awarded her attorneys’ fees and costs.”
While Raquel suggested that Ariana had screenshot her racy video clips onto her own device, which left her “terrified Madix would leak them” because she “hated her guts and was out for blood,” Ariana denied having passed them on.
In her own filing, it was noted that Ariana learned about Raquel and Sandoval’s affair “in the worst possible way,” by finding the videos on Sandoval’s phone, and that she was “devastated and immediately confronted” Sandoval. She also texted Raquel a message, which read, “You’re dead to me,” with the video.
However, Ariana didn’t “share or show any of the video footage she found” because Sandoval immediately deleted them from her phone.
“I did not send the videos to anyone else … I only saw the video of [Leviss] masturbating in places secluded from others — alone in the bathroom stall and in the alley with Mr. Sandoval,” Ariana wrote in a separate set of court documents.
“A heated argument ensued between me and Mr. Sandoval, and Mr. Sandoval forcibly grabbed my phone from my hands, causing my credit cards and driver’s license to fall to the pavement,” she continued. “I quickly grabbed my cards off the pavement and chased after Mr. Sandoval, who had further distanced himself from the club. By the time I caught up to him, Mr. Sandoval had deleted from my phone the videos I had recorded of the Facetime video.”
Sandoval’s response to Raquel’s lawsuit was filed earlier this month, and suggested it was a “thinly veiled attempt to extend her fame and to rebrand herself as the victim instead of the other woman.” It was also stated that her case attempted to portray him as “predatory” and Ariana as a “scorned woman.”
Following Sandoval’s filing, Raquel’s attorneys, Mark Geragos and Bryan Freedman, shared a statement with Reality Blurb.
“Sandoval’s response in the face of irrefutable evidence that will be presented in court is disturbing,” they said. “Leveraging such claims for media attention and perpetuating victim-blaming is not just deplorable but actionable.”
In her lawsuit filing in February, Raquel had insisted there was “more to the story” of her sordid affair with Sandoval.
“Lost in the mix was that Leviss was a victim of the predatory and dishonest behavior of an older man, who recorded sexually explicit videos of her without her knowledge or consent, which were then distributed, disseminated and discussed publicly by a scorned woman seeking vengeance, catalyzing the scandal,” the filing stated.
Raquel is seeking damages and requesting Ariana and Sandoval refrain from sharing any of the videos they potentially have — and destroy all copies.
Vanderpump Rules season 11 airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on Bravo.
