Justin Baldoni Decides Not To Subpeona Taylor Swift After All

1 month ago 1

Justin Baldoni is no longer seeking text messages between his “It Ends With Us” co-star Blake Lively and her friend, singer Taylor Swift.

The two actors have been legally squabbling since the film’s release late last summer with Lively accusing Baldoni of sexually harassing her during the making of the film, while Baldoni is suing Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, for $400 million for defamation.

On Thursday, it appeared that Baldoni’s lawyer, Bryan Freedman, had withdrawn a court request to Swift for access to messages in which Lively’s lawyers allegedly demanded that the singer “release a statement of support for Ms. Lively.”

Lively’s spokesperson told People that the actor is “pleased” that Baldoni’s legal team had “withdrawn their harassing subpoenas to Taylor Swift and her law firm.”

However, Lively’s rep told People that it supported the efforts of Swift’s reps to “quash these inappropriate subpoenas” and “we will continue to stand up for any third party who is unjustly harassed or threatened in the process.”

The subpoena in question was filed by Freedman earlier this month. In it, he claimed that Lively’s lawyer Michael Gottlieb implied to Swift’s legal reps that “private text messages of a personal nature” between the singer and Lively would be leaked to the public if Swift didn’t go along with the plan to issue a public statement of support.

Gottlieb told People that any suggestion Lively had attempted to extort Swift was “categorically false,” but Freedman filed a subpoena against the singer in order to get the request documents.

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Gottlieb later argued that Baldoni should subpoena Lively and Reynolds for the requested documents, not Swift.

HuffPost reached out to Freedman for comment, but no one immediately responded.

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