Blake Lively Asked Taylor Swift to Delete Texts and ‘Demanded’ Public Support, Justin Baldoni Claims

Justin Baldoni’s lawyers claim Blake Lively asked Taylor Swift to delete text messages and used “extortionate threats” to try to get a statement of support from the pop superstar in the It Ends With Us legal battle — accusations, attributed to an anonymous source, that Lively’s lawyers say is “categorically false.”

The salacious allegations come in a court filing Wednesday (May 14) from attorney Bryan Freedman, 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.

On Monday (May 12), Swift’s 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 “witness tampering and evidence spoliation” to get Swift on her side in the case.

“The Wayfarer parties’ 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’s possession would be released,” writes Freedman.

“The Wayfarer parties’ 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,” Freedman continues. “It 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.”

Freedman’s letter does not identify his anonymous source or explain how this person allegedly came to know about Lively and her attorney Michael Gottlieb‘s communications, nor does it cite any evidence. Freedman did not immediately return a request for more details.

Gottlieb quickly released a fiery statement denying the claims on Wednesday.

“This is categorically false,” Gottlieb writes. “We 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’ 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.”

Gottlieb adds that his team “will imminently file motions with the court to hold these attorneys accountable for their misconduct here.”

Reps for Swift did not immediately return a request for comment Wednesday. Swift’s camp previously criticized Baldoni for trying to drag her into the dispute, saying she had no involvement in It Ends With Us and that her name was being thrown around to “draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case.”

Lively 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.

Swift was brought into the fray when Baldoni countersued Lively for defamation and claimed that the actress leveraged her relationship with a “megacelebrity friend,” presumed to be Swift, to bully her way into more control of It Ends With Us.

Baldoni’s legal filing includes text messages concerning an alleged meeting attended by “Ryan and Taylor,” seemingly referencing Swift and Lively’s husband, Ryan Reynolds. In one message sent by Lively, the actress called Swift and Reynolds her “most trusted partners” and compared them to the “dragons” in the show Game of Thrones.

“The message could not have been clearer,” Baldoni’s lawyers wrote in the countersuit. “Baldoni was not just dealing with Lively. He was also facing Lively’s ‘dragons,’ two of the most influential and wealthy celebrities in the world, who were not afraid to make things very difficult for him.”