BREAKING NEWSJustin Baldoni Sues Former Publicist, Claims She 'Maliciously' Leaked Texts That Started Legal Drama With 'It Ends With Us' Costar Blake Lively
Justin Baldoni sued his former publicist, claiming she 'maliciously' leaked texts that started his legal drama with Blake Lively.
In the wake of a legal battle with Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni and Jennifer Abel are suing his former publicist, Stephanie Jones.
Blake Lively sued Justin Baldoni in 2024.
Jones represented Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios last summer when news broke about him and Lively having issues. Abel was Jones’ partner at JONESWORKS PR and was the point of contact for Baldoni’s account. The lawsuit was filed over allegations Jones leaked texts that started the legal battle between Baldoni and Lively.
The lawsuit notes Jones started to become unsettled with negative press about her, leading her to plot a “revenge campaign” against Baldoni and Abel as they both decided to no longer work with Joneswork PR.
In the New York Times story about Lively’s allegations against Baldoni, they claimed to have been privy to “thousands of pages of text messages and emails that she [Lively] obtained through a subpoena.” These messages are now believed to have been from Abel’s phone, which was taken in August 2024 when she informed Jones she was leaving JONESWORKS and starting her own firm.
Stephanie Jones formerly represented Justin Baldoni.
Two days prior to her last day, the lawsuit notes Abel was “confronted by a physically imposing security guard, a forensic data extraction technical expert, and an attorney sitting at a conference table awash in documents.” A security guard stood outside the doors, blocking the exit, while an attorney in the room advised her to review the documents and sign.
He stated that "JONESWORKS suspected Abel had retained proprietary information on her personal laptop. Abel was told that JONESWORKS would have grounds to sue if she did not allow them access.” She handed over her laptop, confident it had no such information on it. They also pressured her to give up her phone, which she agreed to “so long as they would confirm that JONESWORKS would immediately release her personal cell phone number, which would enable JONESWORKS to take possession of the physical device without gaining unrestrained access to its contents.”
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Jennifer Abel had been the point of contact for Justin Baldoni's account when she worked for Stephanie Jones.
While they promised her they would relinquish her phone number, they ended up not following through.
“By refusing to release Abel’s phone number, JONESWORKS had usurped her contact information and cut off Abel’s access to critical accounts protected by two-factor authentication linked to that phone number,” the lawsuit notes. “As a result, Abel lost access to her iCloud (including all her text messages, photos, and contacts), bank accounts, utilities, insurance, and virtually every other sensitive account. By contrast, Jones now had unrestricted access to everything stored on Abel’s phone — her text messages, emails, personal photos.”
The complaint also notes Jones “turned over the contents of Abel’s phone to Lively and her team — without a subpoena — so they could slice and dice her communications to to construct a false narrative about the source of Lively’s bad publicity.”
Text messages were viewed by 'The New York Times' in their story on Blake Lively's accusations against Justin Baldoni.
In a statement to Variety, Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freeman said, “It is undeniable that Stephanie Jones initiated this catastrophic sequence of events by violating the most basic of privacy rights, as well as any remaining trust her clients held. No stranger to stirring up crisis scenarios for departing clients, Ms. Jones maliciously turned over communications from the phone she wrongfully took from her own partner to her cohort, [Lively’s personal publicist] Leslie Sloane, immediately after Jones was terminated for cause by Wayfarer due to her own wrongful behavior.”
Freeman also claimed Jones has a “well-documented history of highly questionable conduct in the workplace.”
“We will not stop until our clients are cleared of all wrongdoing and compensated for the vast damages that they have incurred,” he added.
As OK! previously reported, Lively is asking a judge to dismiss Baldoni's defamation lawsuit against her.
Kristin Tahler, partner at Quinn Emmanuel and a representative of Jones, provided the following statement to OK!:
“Ms. Jones’ lawsuit is based entirely on facts and concrete evidence. That suit clearly shows that Jen Abel conspired with Melissa Nathan and others to steal reams of confidential documents, clients and staff and eventually attempt to destroy the business that Ms. Jones spent decades building. Abel, Nathan, Baldoni and their co-defendants attempted to achieve these outcomes through bullying distortion and outright disparagement. These facts are backed up by dozens of messages provided in the suit we filed month ago and cannot be credibly disputed. Having no facts or evidence, we see a familiar playbook -- smear our client, culminating in the work of fiction masquerading as the counterclaims that were filed yesterday."
