Blake Lively subpoenas telecom giants for phone records as evidence in Justin Baldoni lawsuit

Blake Lively’s legal team has issued subpoenas to crisis PR consultant Jed Wallace, as well as AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and other entities, seeking more evidence of Justin Baldoni’s alleged smear campaign against her.

Lively’s attorneys, Mike Gottlieb and Esra Hudson, stated, "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. 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, Baldoni’s lawyer, created a website featuring Baldoni’s amended lawsuit against Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds.

The subpoenas come a week after Lively’s team withdrew a request in Texas to depose Wallace, who could now be added to their New York lawsuit against Baldoni and others. Wallace responded by filing an 11-page defamation lawsuit against Lively, which now opens him up to discovery and deposition.

A spokesperson for Lively’s team said, "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."

Subpoenas were also sent to AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Cloudflare Inc., and AOL. Regarding the telecom companies, Lively’s spokesperson stated, "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," adding, "Internet records will show the involvement of different persons who might be playing key roles in digital retaliation."

Lively is set to file an amended lawsuit next Tuesday against Baldoni, his Wayfarer partner Jamey Heath, their publicist Jennifer Abel, and crisis PR executive Melissa Nathan. Her team originally requested an extension until March 5 but was granted only four extra days, moving the deadline from February 14.

Freedman responded to the subpoenas, stating, "Subpoenas are an ordinary part of the litigation process. What is extraordinary is what the Lively Parties are seeking. They are asking for every single call, text, data log, and even real-time location information for the past 2.5 years, regardless of the sender, recipient, or subject matter. This massive fishing expedition demonstrates that they are desperately seeking any factual basis for their provably false claims. They will find none."