2008 Playboy Playmate of the year, Jayde Nicole, has issued an official statement regarding the attack she suffered at the hands of “Girls Gone Wild” mogul Joe Francis at a Hollywood club late last week. According to Nicole, Francis attacked her from behind, threw her down, and punched her in the face. Reports that came out last week claim that Francis’ attack occurred after Nicole through a drink at him. If you watch a paparazzi video on TMZ taken right after the incident, Nicole is visibly upset and shaken and shows the bruises near her eye that she says were inflicted by Francis. She comes across as completely believable. Francis claims that Nicole’s boyfriend, reality star Brody Jenner, is the one who punched him out of nowhere and that all he did was kind of grab Nicole. Jenner then ended up getting tased by someone that night outside the club, which Francis didn’t mention as far as I could tell. This wasn’t the first bar fight between Jenner and Francis – they were involved in previous altercation in March, at which time Francis is also alleged to have hit Nicole.

Joe Francis claims he was sucker punched. But Jayde Nicole insists it’s Francis who prefers to take the cheap shots.

“Jayde Nicole was the victim of a violent assault when she was attacked from behind, thrown down to the ground by her hair and beaten in the face and body in front of multiple witnesses by a person identified as Joe Francis,” her rep, Jerry Shandrew, said in a statement Monday.

Shandrew says that the Playboy Playmate will not be talking too much while authorities investigate the rumble that occurred early Friday between Francis, Nicole and her boyfriend, Brody Jenner, outside a Hollywood club. Instead, they’d rather the police be the ones making all the noise.

Noting that Nicole filed a police report immediately afterward and has been cooperating with the cops, Shandrew added, “Because of the ongoing criminal investigation of Mr. Francis, it will be inappropriate to comment further at this time out of respect for the law enforcement process.”

Of course, Nicole’s version of the story couldn’t be any different from Francis’, as he has admitted to maybe a bit of hair pulling and denied everything else.

Francis maintains Nicole poured a drink on him inside Guys and Dolls that night, and, in turning around, he may have grabbed her hair.

He told E! News Friday that, after security had helped him get outside, it was an unprovoked Jenner who hit him in the face. “He coldcocked me,” Francis said. He threatened legal action against Jenner afterward for accusing him via Twitter of beating on Nicole.

But according to Nicole’s rep, there is photographic and video evidence of Francis attacking her, not to mention hospital records of her injuries.

“It is the hope of those who love and care about Jayde that Mr. Francis will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Shandrew said.

[From E! Online]

Radar Online has more details of the night in question, and apparently the altercation started because Jayde and Brody were with an ex girlfriend of Joe Francis’, model Abbey Wilson, at the club. Wilson gave Radar a statement about what happened, and by her account Francis grabbed her and forcibly tried to kiss her. She said that Jayde then intervened but she wasn’t sure if Jayde threw a drink at Joe at all. Then Francis grabbed Jayde by the hair and pulled her back, but the rest was supposedly out of view:

“As I tried to get away from him Jayde intervened and (Francis) grabbed her hair and she fell backwards. I’m not sure if a drink was poured over him though. The next thing a whole bunch of people surrounded us and I couldn’t see any actual physical attacks.”

[From Radar Online]

It sounds like Wilson is being super careful not to incriminate anyone in her statement, and I would bet that she witnessed much more than she’s owning up to. She also says that in the year she lived with Francis he was never violent toward her and she never witnessed him being violent toward anyone else. I find that hard to believe, and maybe she’s scared of the guy and is covering up for him, but whatever.

Joe Francis still faces federal tax evasion charges. His trial is scheduled to start on October 14. E! Online asked a rep from the US Attorney’s Office if Francis’ attack on Nicole could put him behind bars while he awaits trial. The rep said it’s too early to tell. The judge isn’t going to take kindly to Francis beating up a woman at a club, though, and maybe it will earn him some more jail time. He’s already spent 11 months in jail without bail on a civil charge for using underage girls in his videos which he claimed that was a gross travesty of justice and whined that the judge and prosecutor had it out for him. The guy spent most of his time in a Nevada jail of his choice where he had phone and Internet privileges, though, so it’s not like he was truly hurting. Francis faces up to ten years in federal prison for tax evasion, and that experience will be nothing like his last stint in jail. There’s at least some justice in this world.

Jayde Nicole is shown on 7/11 (with Brody Jenner) and 7/30/09. Credit: WENN.com. Joe Francis is shown on 7/28/09. Credit: PRPhotos