The New York Times has issued a strong rebuttal to allegations made by Justin Baldoni in his amended lawsuit against Blake Lively.
On February 1, Baldoni filed an amended version of his $400 million defamation suit accusing his It Ends With Us co-star of giving the news outlet early access to her sexual harassment complaint.
In the updated suit, Baldoni’s legal team claims that an analysis of the article’s HTML source code revealed references to a ‘message-embed-generator’ with a date of ‘2024-10-31,’ though the article in question was not published until December 2024.
In response, The New York Times issued a statement rejecting the allegations, particularly a claim that the publication had gained ‘early access’ to Lively’s civil rights complaint.
A spokesperson for The Times said in a statement, per JustJared, ‘The Baldoni/Wayfarer legal filings are rife with inaccuracies about The New York Times, including, for example, the bogus claim that The Times had early access to Ms. Lively’s state civil rights complaint.
‘Mr. Baldoni’s lawyers base their erroneous claim on postings by amateur internet sleuths, who, not surprisingly, are wrong.’
The spokesperson further addressed the specific allegation regarding the article’s date, noting that the sleuths had pointed to a version of Lively’s state complaint published by The Times that showed a ‘December 10’ date, despite the complaint not being filed until more than a week later.
However, they clarified, ‘The problem: that date is generated by Google software and is unrelated to the date when The Times received it and posted it. A look at the metadata from the posted document correctly shows it was posted after Ms. Lively filed it with the California Civil Rights Department.’
In the revised legal filing submitted late Friday, Baldoni’s legal team said, ‘Of course, it may be the case that the New York Times just happened to load a new tool for embedding text messages within an article as part of routine system upgrades, only to stumble six weeks later upon the perfect opportunity to show off this new graphic tool in an article that relied heavily upon cherry-picked and misleadingly reframed text messages.
‘But the simpler explanation is that the New York Times had already begun building its defamatory article no later than October 31, 2024, including developing a slick new graphic display module to prominently feature the misleadingly edited and context-stripped text messages centered in the article,’ the suit continues.
The amended complaint also includes an updated timeline, dating back to January 1, 2019, when Baldoni first reached out to Colleen Hoover, author of It Ends with Us, about adapting her novel into a film.
The timeline details his communications with both Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, as well as events surrounding the book’s release and public reception, followed by the ongoing legal dispute.
The news comes as Baldoni launched his own website dedicated to defending himself against Lively’s sexual harassment allegations.
In an attempt to share his side of the story, the actor, 41, who is seeking to offer transparency to the public amid his legal battle, shared a website containing his amended complaint and a timeline of relevant events related to the case.
Baldoni attorney, Bryan Freedman, told DailyMail.com that Baldoni’s amended his lawsuit due ‘to the overwhelming amount of new proof that has come to light.’
‘This fresh evidence corroborates what we knew all along, that due to purely egotistical reasons 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,’ Freedman continued.
He concluded: ‘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.’
Earlier this month, in a filing DailyMail.com, obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com, it was reported that Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, were doubling down on their efforts to gag Baldoni and his lawyers.
In a letter to the judge presiding over the case on Monday, the couple’s attorney urgently requested a conference to highlight their ‘growing concerns’ over what they describe as Freedman’s alleged ‘extrajudicial misconduct’.
The filing cites Freedman’s recent media appearances as well as a report of a new website being created by Baldoni’s team to ‘strategically release selected documents and communications’ between the two feuding co-stars.
The report, published by the Daily Mail last week, revealed Baldoni’s lawyers are in the process of building a website on the case that will allow anyone to see numerous snippets of unedited footage from the film, including anything which ‘speaks to’ Lively’s original complaint about the actor.
Freedman has publicly warned: ‘We have all the receipts – and more.’
But the couple’s attorney Michael Gottlieb has claimed the website and Freedman’s public comments are part of a campaign to ‘influence proceedings and the public perception’ of the case with ‘inflammatory content’.
‘He further has made it clear that his priority is to ‘torpedo Blake Lively’s career for good’ by, among other things, creating a website to release strategically selected documents and communications between Ms. Lively and Mr. Baldoni,’ Gottlieb states in the letter.
‘The planned website will release what Mr. Freedman self-servingly proclaims will be ‘full unedited WhatsApp, text and email exchanges between Lively and Baldoni,’ although neither the media nor public will have any way of knowing which communications Mr. Freedman has selectively omitted from disclosure, including communications that Mr. Freedman and his clients may have deleted.’
Gottlieb goes on to argue that the website will ‘presumably not include’ communications that Freedman and Baldoni have had with media sources, meaning it will be ‘incomplete, biased, and prejudicial by design’.
He also claims Freedman’s ‘efforts to spin’ Lively’s request for a gag order as an attempt to silence them out of fear, in a bid to ‘impugn’ her character.
A source familiar with case claimed that the website will promote transparency in the case and denied it would contain selective material.
‘There is nothing that will be selective on the website. The aim here is to do the exact opposite of what they did – to not be selective, to not cherry pick, and to not doctor text messages which they did when they gave them to the New York Times,’ the source told DailyMail.com on Monday.
Lively and Baldoni’s feud first emerged in rumors of discord on the set of the domestic abuse drama that heated up during the promotional campaign that accompanied its release last August.
According to Baldoni, the bitterness between the film’s two stars was so bad he and his family were banished to a cinema basement for the premiere on Lively’s orders.
In December, the drama exploded into a legal fight when Lively sued claiming sexual harassment.
At the same time, the New York Times released a story based on Lively’s legal filing that accused Baldoni of orchestrating a negative publicity campaign against her and put the harassment claim front and center.
In turn, Baldoni sued the Times for defamation and, last week, launched a lawsuit against Lively and Reynolds that accused her of using their celebrity power to hijack his film and attempt to torpedo his career.
Another twist in the tale came earlier this week, when DailyMail.com obtained raw footage showing the slow dance montage scene during which Lively claimed Baldoni had sexually harassed her by nuzzling her neck and declaring: ‘It smells so good’.
In her civil rights complaint filed last month, the actress insisted nobody overheard the comment because the romantic montage was silent and the microphones were switched off.
But DailyMail.com revealed Baldoni’s sound equipment was on – and exclusively obtained an explosive video showing all three takes that smashes Lively’s claims into smithereens.
The tapes show how friendly the two stars were before it all went so wrong. They laugh and joke around – even joshing about the size of Baldoni’s nose and talk about how they spend their time with their spouses.
They include a complete record of the conversation in question that makes clear the comment about her smelling so good was in response to Lively talking about her spray tan as they film a romantic dance.
Baldoni tells Lively he’s probably getting his beard on her and she responds by saying she’s probably getting spray tan on him.
Then he quips back ‘it smells good’ before both laugh and she tells him the scent actually comes from her body makeup.
And while the montage does show Baldoni nuzzling Lively’s neck as part of the scene in which they play lovers, the conversation between them is all business with the pair spending most of it talking about lighting and their other halves.
The raw footage clip comes complete with audio and was passed to DailyMail.com by the actor’s production company Wayfarer and Freedman who has previously said Baldoni has ‘nothing to hide’.
Our exclusive footage is among the many recent revelations in a lengthy saga that began with talk of rancor behind the scenes of It Ends With Us.
It exploded into a legal fight just before Christmas when the former Gossip Girl sued Baldoni for sexual harassment.
At the same time, the New York Times released a story based on Lively’s legal filing that accused him of orchestrating a negative publicity campaign against her and put the smell claim front and center.
In turn, Baldoni sued the Times for defamation and, last week, launched a $400million lawsuit against Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds that accused her of using her celebrity power to hijack his film and attempt to torpedo his career.
