Woman who says Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is her father now accuses him of defamation

A 26-year-old woman on Monday filed a federal defamation suit against Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, a longtime Arkansas friend and a Cowboys spokesman, alleging the three men «initiated a deliberate plan» to portray the billionaire's «own daughter… as an 'extortionist' and a 'shakedown artist' whose motivation was money and greed.»

Alexandra Davis, a Congressional aide, sought recognition as Jones' daughter in a lawsuit filed last year that indicated Jones paid her $375,000 and set up two trusts to conceal that he was Davis' biological father. The new lawsuit states that in the weeks after Davis' March 2022 filing, Jones and his representatives waged a public campaign attacking her character, «based knowingly on false statements and accusations.»

Davis' latest lawsuit, filed in Texarkana, Texas, federal court, names three defendants: Jones, his longtime Arkansas lawyer and friend Donald T. Jack Jr. and Jones' outside communications consultant, Jim Wilkinson. Davis is seeking an unspecified amount in actual and punitive damages.

«Not once did Defendant Jones or any of his agents ever deny that Plaintiff was Defendant Jones' daughter,» Davis' Dallas lawyers, Jay K. Gray and Andrew A. Bergman, wrote in the 22-page defamation complaint. «Instead, Defendant Jones chose the avenue of calling his own daughter an 'extortionist' merely to make his own public image less despicable by attempting to discredit Plaintiff's reputation and character in the public eye.»

In a statement released to ESPN on Monday, Davis said her initial lawsuit had only one goal: For Jones to «acknowledge» he was her father.

«Rather than acknowledging his child, or even taking the opportunity to get to know his child, my father and his associates have