{"id":5810,"date":"2025-05-14T20:28:14","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T20:28:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/blake-lively-asked-taylor-swift-to-delete-texts-justin-baldoni-says\/"},"modified":"2025-05-14T20:28:14","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T20:28:14","slug":"blake-lively-asked-taylor-swift-to-delete-texts-justin-baldoni-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/blake-lively-asked-taylor-swift-to-delete-texts-justin-baldoni-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Blake Lively Asked Taylor Swift to Delete Texts, Justin Baldoni Says"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tJ<\/span>ustin Baldoni\u2019s lawyers claim Blake Lively asked Taylor Swift to delete text messages and used \u201cextortionate threats\u201d to try to get a statement of support from the pop superstar in the It Ends With Us <\/em>legal battle \u2014 accusations, attributed to an anonymous source, that Lively\u2019s lawyers say is \u201ccategorically false.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe salacious allegations come in a court filing Wednesday (May 14) from attorney Bryan Freedman<\/strong>, who represents Baldoni and his production company Wayfarer Studios in litigation with Lively over dueling claims that include allegations of sexual harassment, retaliation and defamation.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Monday (May 12), Swift\u2019s longtime lawyers at the firm Venable told a judge that Baldoni sent them a subpoena for no good reason. Now, Freedman claims he actually does have a good reason: he wants to dig into accusations from an unnamed source that Lively tried to engage in \u201cwitness tampering and evidence spoliation\u201d to get Swift on her side in the case.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe Wayfarer parties\u2019 counsel are informed and believe, based on information from a source who is highly likely to have reliable information, that (i) Ms. Lively requested that Taylor Swift delete their text messages; (ii) Michael Gottlieb of Willkie Farr, counsel for the Lively defendants, contacted a Venable attorney who represents Ms. Swift and demanded that Ms. Swift release a statement of support for Ms. Lively, intimating that, if Ms. Swift refused to do so, private text messages of a personal nature in Ms. Lively\u2019s possession would be released,\u201d writes Freedman.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe Wayfarer parties\u2019 counsel are further informed and believe that a representative of Ms. Swift addressed these inappropriate and apparently extortionate threats in at least one written communication transmitted to Mr. Gottlieb,\u201d Freedman continues. \u201cIt is those communications that the Wayfarer parties seek to obtain by way of subpoena, as they would evidence an attempt to intimidate and coerce a percipient witness in this litigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFreedman\u2019s letter does not identify his anonymous source or explain how this person allegedly came to know about Lively and her attorney Michael Gottlieb<\/strong>\u2018s communications, nor does it cite any evidence. Freedman did not immediately return a request for more details.<\/p>\n

\n\tGottlieb quickly released a fiery statement denying the claims on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is categorically false,\u201d Gottlieb writes. \u201cWe unequivocally deny all of these so-called allegations, which are cowardly sourced to supposed anonymous sources, and completely untethered from reality. This is what we have come to expect from the Wayfarer parties\u2019 lawyers, who appear to love nothing more than shooting first, without any evidence, and with no care for the people they are harming in the process.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGottlieb adds that his team \u201cwill imminently file motions with the court to hold these attorneys accountable for their misconduct here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tReps for Swift did not immediately return a request for comment Wednesday. Swift\u2019s camp previously criticized Baldoni for trying to drag her into the dispute, saying she had no involvement in It Ends With Us <\/em>and that her name was being thrown around to \u201cdraw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tLively alleges in the case that Baldoni, her co-star and director on the movie released last summer, sexually harassed her on set and then orchestrated a public relations smear campaign to retaliate against her after she complained.<\/p>\n

\n\tSwift was brought into the fray when Baldoni countersued Lively for defamation and claimed that the actress leveraged her relationship with a \u201cmegacelebrity friend,\u201d presumed to be Swift, to bully her way into more control of It Ends With Us<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\tBaldoni\u2019s legal filing includes text messages concerning an alleged meeting attended by \u201cRyan and Taylor,\u201d seemingly referencing Swift and Lively\u2019s husband, Ryan Reynolds. In one message sent by Lively, the actress called Swift and Reynolds her \u201cmost trusted partners\u201d and compared them to the \u201cdragons\u201d in the show Game of Thrones<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe message could not have been clearer,\u201d Baldoni\u2019s lawyers wrote in the countersuit. \u201cBaldoni was not just dealing with Lively. He was also facing Lively\u2019s \u2018dragons,\u2019 two of the most influential and wealthy celebrities in the world, who were not afraid to make things very difficult for him.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Justin Baldoni\u2019s lawyers claim Blake Lively asked Taylor Swift to delete text messages and used \u201cextortionate threats\u201d to try to get a statement of support from the pop […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5811,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3068,4556,4554,5938,2001,5874,3029,3028,1546],"class_list":["post-5810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-asked","tag-baldoni","tag-blake","tag-delete","tag-justin","tag-lively","tag-swift","tag-taylor","tag-texts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}