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Tom Sandoval is firing back at Rachel “Raquel” Leviss‘ bombshell lawsuit against him and Ariana Madix.
Months after the 29-year-old former Vanderpump Rules star accused Sandoval, 41, and Ariana, 38, of revenge porn, invasion of privacy, eavesdropping, and other charges, Sandoval slammed his ex-mistress for using her case against them to “rebrand herself as the victim.”
According to a recently filed motion obtained by Radar Online on April 25, in which Sandoval requests to have Raquel’s claims against him dismissed, he believes Raquel filed her lawsuit in an effort to remain relevant.
“This civil case arises out of a sordid affair between Plaintiff RACHEL LEVISS and Defendant THOMAS SANDOVAL — two of the central figures in the widely publicized and popular reality television series entitled ‘Vanderpump Rules.’ The affair, dubbed ‘Scandoval,’ occurred while SANDOVAL was cohabitating with his longtime girlfriend, fellow cast member, and co-defendant ARIANA MADIX. The affair came to light when MADIX discovered explicit Facetime videos of LEVISS on SANDOVAL’s phone,” his documents explained.
As Pump Rules fans well know, Raquel has claimed that those videos were taken without consent by Sandoval and passed around by Ariana, whose discovery of one of them led to her and Sandoval’s messy March 2023 split.
“After thrusting the vicissitudes of her life into the limelight for ongoing public consumption and critique from 2016 through 2023, LEVISS has now filed the instant action against Defendants SANDOVAL and MADIX complaining of being ‘an object of public scorn and ridicule,’” the documents continued, slamming Raquel’s lawsuits as “a thinly veiled attempt to extend her fame and to rebrand herself as the victim instead of the other woman while denigrating her former friend MADIX as a ‘scorned woman’ and her former paramour SANDOVAL as ‘predatory.’”
Sandoval went on to suggest that in addition to painting herself as the victim with her lawsuit, she’s also used her podcast to her advantage.
“Indeed, to establish LEVISS as the victim, her Complaint contains irrelevant but incendiary allegations of LEVISS’ persecution by multiple non-parties, i.e., Bravo Media, Evolution Media, her former boyfriend James Kennedy, Scheana Shay, and Andy Cohen. Notably, since November of 2023 to the present date, LEVISS has actively maintained a provocative podcast, ‘Rachel Goes Rogue,’ to further bend the narrative to her will,” he explained.
Sandoval then signaled to Raquel’s former role on Pump Rules.
“It is thereby impossible to deduce from the allegations whether LEVISS’s private life was subject to a broad relinquishment of rights under the terms of said ‘contract’ including whether the filming and exposure of her private affairs were to be the subject of the show’s narrative plot,” his documents stated. “Accepting LEVISS’s allegations as true, the line between her ‘private’ conduct and fodder for a high-profile public reality television series is indisputably blurred.”
Sandoval also wrote that he obtained NSFW videos of Raquel because she allowed him to and even made them for him.
“LEVISS fails to and cannot allege any facts showing that SANDOVAL committed an intrusion into her solitude or that SANDOVAL obtained unwanted access to data about LEVISS. To the contrary, LEVISS intended for SANDOVAL to see her explicit videos, LEVISS made the videos for SANDOVAL, and LEVISS shared the videos with SANDOVAL via a consensual exchange on Facetime, i.e., ‘their video calls,’” he alleged.
Vanderpump Rules season 11 airs Tuesdays at 8/7c on Bravo.
