Lina Labiad
01/07/2025 at 09:21
Faced with Justin Baldoni’s counterattack, Blake Lively’s legal team issued a statement, calling for “the new offensives” to be stopped.
For them, it is not a question of “my word against his”. Blake Lively’s lawyers have weighed in on the latest twist with a new statement. A week ago, Justin Baldoni filed a complaint against the “New York Times” for defamation, believing that it was the actress who was involved in “a well-calculated smear campaign”.
Monday, January 6, Blake Lively’s legal team sent a press release via “People” magazine, assuring that the actress’ “complaint for sexual harassment” was supported by “solid” evidence: “This is not neither a ‘squabble’ over ‘creative differences’, nor a ‘he says that/she says that’. As we will prove, Wayfarer [Studio de Justin Baldoni, NDLR] and her associates conducted completely illegal retaliatory astroturfing, simply because Blake Lively attempted to protect herself and her colleagues on the set of a movie. In response, they prefer to launch other offensives against it. »
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See you in federal court
According to the actress’s lawyers, this would be a “classic tactic” to distract attention “away from this type of accusations”: “They blame the victim by suggesting that she would have searched, that she would have misunderstood the situation or that she would have lied,” they continue. “Another tactic is to reverse the roles of the victim and the aggressor. These are concepts that normalize accusations of serious misconduct. »
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In conclusion, Blake Lively’s legal team believes that making “statements in the media” as Justin Baldoni and his team have done in the past does not constitute a truthful defense. “We will continue to pursue Blake Lively’s claims in federal court, where the rule of law determines who prevails, not hyperbole and threats. »
As a reminder, it was Blake Lively’s complaint against Justin Baldoni for acts of sexual harassment that occurred on the set of their first (and last) collaboration, “Jamais Plus” and the shock investigation by the “New York Times” which started this business. At the same time, she also accused the producer and his team of having led a smear campaign against her online, through various processes. On January 1, Justin Baldoni announced that he was suing the “New York Times” for defamation for $250 million.
