Blake Lively’s team issued subpoenas to crisis PR firm consultant Jed Wallace as well as multiple wireless carriers on Wednesday in order to prove once and for all whether Justin Baldoni really has the “receipts” his team claims to have.
AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Cloudflare Inc. and AOL were all on the receiving end of the latest update in the actors’ never-ending “It Ends With Us” legal battle, TheWrap has learned.
“Ms. Lively has initiated discovery that will expose the people, tactics and methods that have worked to ‘destroy’ and ‘bury’ her reputation and family over the past year,” Lively’s lawyers Mike Gottlieb and Esra Hudson told TheWrap in a statement. “Subpoenas went out to the entities [above]. We will now receive all of the ‘receipts’ that, unsurprisingly, are nowhere to be found on Mr. [Bryan] Freedman’s website, and like Ms. Lively, those ‘receipts’ will have their day in court.”
Freedman and Baldoni recently created the website TheLawsuitInfo.com to present a chronological timeline of the related events as well as their amended complaint, which contained dozens of screenshots of text messages between the feuding parties. Freedman did not immediately respond Wednesday to the action.
“The decision to amend our lawsuit was a logical next step due to the overwhelming amount of new proof that has come to light,” Freedman said in a Feb. 1 statement. “This fresh evidence corroborates what we knew all along, that due to a blind pursuit of power, Ms. Lively and her entire team colluded for months to destroy reputations through a complex web of lies, false accusations and the manipulation of illicitly received communications. The ongoing public interest in this case online has ironically shed light on the undeniable facts pertaining to The New York Times and how heavily Ms. Lively and her representatives were not only deeply involved in the attempted take down and smear campaign of Mr. Baldoni, Wayfarer Studios and their teams but that they themselves initiated it.”
Regarding Wallace’s alleged involvement, a spokesperson for Lively told TheWrap on Wednesday, “In their internal private messages that Baldoni’s team never expected anyone would see, they bragged that thanks to Jed’s work, they saw a shift in the narrative to putting a spotlight on Blake and laughed at how sad it was that people so easily want to hate on a woman. We look forward to investigating more about Jed Wallace’s entire business model and what else he was doing to distract from the very real sexual harassment and retaliation claims made by Ms. Lively. We are delighted to be able to start discovery on it.”
The update comes a week after Wallace from Street Relations in Texas sued the actress for defamation, seeking $7 million in damages since he claims he was not involved in the alleged smear campaign against her.
Lively petitioned to depose Wallace in a Texas state court last month, initially accusing him of launching online harassment as part of Baldoni’s public relations response to their public falling-out. Her petition was dropped last week, but Wallace could still potentially be named as a defendant in her lawsuit against the actor and his Wayfarer production company.
“Neither Wallace nor Street had anything to do with the alleged sexual harassment, retaliation, failure to investigate or aiding and abetting the alleged harassment or alleged retaliation,” the firm stated in documents with the California Civil Rights Department in January. “Neither could they have breached a contract with Lively because no such contract exists.”
In regards to AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, Lively’s spokesperson said, “Phone records belonging to all of the individual defendants will expose the full web of individuals who were involved in the smear campaign against Ms. Lively. Such records will provide critical and irrefutable evidence not only about who, but also about when, where and how their retaliation plan came together and operated.”
Additionally, when it comes to Cloudflare Inc. and AOL, they said, “Internet records will show the involvement of different persons who might be playing key roles in digital retaliation.”
Baldoni is currently suing Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds, their publicist and The New York Times for $400 million over what he called “falsified stories” (he dropped his separate $250 million defamation lawsuit against the NYT, and instead amended the above counterclaim to include the paper).
His suit came after Lively first accused Baldoni of sexual harassment in December.
At last week’s first hearing for the case, both parties were ordered to follow New York’s Rules of Professional Conduct, which prevent lawyers from prejudicing their juries with comments. With that said, they are still allowed to talk to the press to defend their clients from bad publicity — meaning no gag order.
As things stand, their trial is expected to begin in March 2026.
