Ariana Madix is fighting her ex-Tom Sandoval's former mistress, Raquel Leviss, who's suing her for alleged revenge porn, and RadarOnline.com has the Vanderpump Rules star's declaration that reveals exactly what she claimed went down in the crucial moments after discovering her boyfriend of nine years had been cheating with one of her best friends.
As this outlet reported, Leviss sued Madix and her ex-lover Sandoval in February for alleged revenge porn, eavesdropping, and invasion of privacy. She claimed Sandoval recorded videos of her "in a state of undress and masturbating" without her "knowledge or consent" and alleged Madix "distributed them and/or showed them to others."
But Madix claimed that's not true, telling the court her name should be stricken from the lawsuit because the only person she showed was Leviss when she texted her the videos to confront her about the affair, later coined "Scandoval."
Madix replayed the night of March 1, 2023, recalling how Sandoval's phone fell out of his pocket while playing with his cover band at TomTom, the West Hollywood bar he co-owns with Lisa Vanderpump and his costar Tom Schwartz.
She admitted to knowing Sandoval's passcode to his phone "because we had been in a committed relationship for so long, and because we trusted one another and presumably did not keep secrets from one another."
Madix further revealed she accessed Sandoval's phone in the restroom in a locked stall.
"For reasons I still do not know, call it a woman’s intuition, when the set ended, I felt the need to check Mr. Sandoval’s phone and went to the women’s room for privacy," her declaration stated. "In a locked stall, I accessed Mr. Sandoval’s phone and saw text conversations between Mr. Sandoval and Plaintiff that appeared incomplete because portions of them had been deleted, which made me suspicious."
"While other women waited to use the toilet, I opened the photo app on Mr. Sandoval’s phone and was shocked to find a video of a Facetime call between Mr. Sandoval and Plaintiff that showed Mr. Sandoval’s face in the upper corner while the main image was of Plaintiff masturbating. I hurriedly took out my own phone and made two recordings of the Facetime video. Prior to that moment, I considered Plaintiff a friend and did not know that she and Mr. Sandoval were having an affair," Madix claimed.
She said when she exited the bathroom, Sandoval asked if she wanted to go into the alley to smoke a cigarette. It was in the alley that she confronted him about the videos of Leviss.
The former Dancing with the Stars contestant then gave a play-by-play of how it all went down. She alleged Sandoval tried to move her away from TomTom because he was "concerned that people might overhear us." Around that same time, Madix said she "sent the videos I recorded to Plaintiff (Leviss) along with a text message reading, 'you're dead to me.'"
"I did not send the videos to anyone else. Nor did I share, display, or show the videos to anyone else. To be clear, I only saw the video of Plaintiff masturbating in places secluded from others— i.e., alone in the bathroom stall and in the alley with Mr. Sandoval," she charged in her argument to remove her name from Leviss' lawsuit.
Madix stated that "a heated argument ensued" between her and Sandoval, in which he allegedly "forcibly grabbed my phone from my hands, causing my credit cards and driver's license to fall to the pavement." She claimed she "chased after" Sandoval.
"By the time I caught up to him, Mr. Sandoval had deleted from my phone the videos I had recorded of the Facetime video," she alleged. "Mr. Sandoval also deleted the videos from the 'recently deleted' folder on my phone."
Madix said, "Minutes later, I texted one of my friends, Logan Cochran, about what had happened, stating, 'i called her [Plaintiff] after finding out and texting her the videos of herself from tom’s phone that i took[.] tom took my phone and deleted them[.] chased him all the way down san vincente[.]'" She then admitted to informing her close friends and family about the affair, the Facetime videos, and the messages she discovered on Sandoval's phone.
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Her legal team argued that contrary to Leviss' claims Ariana allegedly distributed the Facetime video to several third parties, "Ms. Madix could not have shared such footage because Mr. Sandoval deleted it from her phone within minutes of Ms. Madix confronting him—a fact Ms. Madix stated in writing 33 minutes after sending the videos to [Leviss]."
Madix accused Leviss of filing the lawsuit to “punish her and blame Ms. Madix for the negative reaction [Leviss] received as a result of her affair with Mr. Sandoval," claiming the legal action is “an abuse of the legal process."
RadarOnline.com told you — Madix wants Leviss' claims against her to be stricken from the legal matter and for Raquel to pay her attorney's fees. But Leviss isn't going down without a fight, with her attorneys Mark Geragos and Bryan Freedman telling us, "The only thing more laughable than Ariana’s motion is her fairytale account of how she discovered the relationship from Tom’s phone."
"Meanwhile, we look forward to cross examining her on her declaration, as we have irrefutable evidence that the videos were distributed," the statement continues. "Lastly, the forensic 'expert' states that the video is not 'NOW' on her phone, well after the events in question and with months of notice that her actions had put her in legal jeopardy."