Blake Lively just had a major win in her multi-lawsuit, multi-million-dollar legal war with Justin Baldoni, and now Taylor Swift’s pal is opening up a brand-new battlefield with the Shake It Off star’s grand nemesis.
Former mega-manager and very public Baldoni buddy Scooter Braun is being subpoenaed in the sprawling case, I’ve learned.
(L-R) Scooter Braun & Justin Baldoni in 2019 (Photo by Michael Buckner/Variety/Penske Media via Getty Images)
Today’s subpoena seeks to hover up any documents and information that Braun has on the work crisis PR boss Melissa Nathan did for the It Ends With Us director. A co-defendant in Lively’s NYE filed suit against Baldoni and his core team, Nathan has been portrayed as one of the masterminds behind the allegedly astroturfing smear campaign and more last year against the Another Simple Favor star.
Nowhere near any potential settlement right now and with Baldoni on the back foot after Monday’s dismissal of his $400 million countersuit against Lively, Ryan Reynolds and others, Lively vs. Baldoni is set to go to trial on March 9, 2026 in federal court in New York City.
Whatever info Lively’s lawyers could acquire from Braun could play a big role in the BTS of what really went down on IEWU and in the aftermath.
An owner of Hybe America, which holds a majority stake in Nathan’s The Agency Group crisis PR firm, ex-Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande manager Braun has been mentioned peripherally before in the Lively matter in the months since it all exploded. An August 2024 text from former Joneswork publicist Jennifer Abel over reports of Baldoni hiring Nathan and TAG to shine up his image as rumblings of discontent on the It Ends With Us production saw Abel writing “at least they didn’t mention Scooter.”
Lively’s reps said they were “not commenting on this,” when contacted by Deadline Tuesday about the Braun subpoena. Baldoni’s lawyers did not respond to Deadline’s request for comment, neither did Braun’s publicist Nathan.
Handed to lawyers this afternoon, the notice of subpoena to Braun, who stepped back from talent management in recent years, comes after a rough 36 hours for Baldoni and crew.
On Monday, Judge Lewis J. Liman tossed out Baldoni’s amended complaint defamation and extortion countersuit against Lively, Ryan Reynolds, their publicist Leslie Sloan and her Vision PR company, plus the New York Times. A blow to Baldoni by any estimation, the dismissal on June 9 and today’s subpoena move is yet another cranking up of the stakes in a case that has proved a gift that keeps on giving for the Age of Digital Spectacle
To that, Braun and Baldoni appeared together in a more than hourlong filmed 2018 roundtable on men and the #MeToo movement produced by the actor’s Wayfarer Studios with the company’s CEO Jamey Heath (another defendant in Lively’s case) and others. “We are all flawed,” Braun notes at one point:
Ever since Lively filed her seemingly damning text message rich sexual harassment and retaliation complaint with California’s Civil Rights Department on December 20, Nathan and fellow publicist Abel have insisted they crossed no line and engaged in no dark arts. With unflattering texts on display in various filings, the duo have proclaimed that while they planned to protect their client against allegations of misconduct from Lively as the Sony distributed IEWU was released, they never had to because the Internet hated Lively all on its own.
Though at one point, as noted in court filed correspondence, there are is a conversation about “planting stories about the weaponization of feminism and how people in [Blake’s] circle like Taylor Swift, have been accused of utilizing these tactics to ‘bully’ into getting what they want.”
The irony of sorts is that Braun is being pulled into this just a couple of weeks after Swift saw a subpoena against her dropped by Baldoni’s side – who said they got most of what they wanted voluntarily. Of course, less than two weeks ago, Swift also bought back a swath of her music catalog six years after Braun deftly gained control of the material without the superstar’s knowledge. Braun purchased Swift’s old label Big Machine and all it owned, like her masters, in 2019. With a lot of, to quote a Swift song, bad blood between the two, the acquisition by one-tine Kanye West rep Braun was the “worst case scenario,” according to Swift.
That bad situation did not get any better despite Braun selling the master recordings of Swift’s first six albums to Shamrock Capital for over $300 million in 2020. Over the years since Braun bought Big Machine, Swift re-recorded four of those albums, with the “Taylor’s Version” results proving acclaimed hits for the Grammy winner.
The official hauling of Justin Bieber’s former manager into the Lively vs. Baldoni morass comes as the Jane the Virgin actor’s main lawyer and the NOW offered very different takeaways today of what the dismissal of Baldoni’s countersuit against his IEWU co-star really means. Tuesday, attorneys for Lively termed the ruling by Judge Lewis Liman as a “total victory” that saw Baldoni’s mid-January filed defamation and extortion action against Lively, Reynolds, their publicist Leslie Sloane and the Gray Lady kicked to the curb.
Setting a June 23 deadline, Judge Liman is permitting Baldoni and his inner circle with the right to file a trimmed new amended complaint that focuses of allegations of tortious interference with contract, relating to Lively and Deadpool star Reynolds, and a breach of implied covenant, specific to Lively.
As one would expect no less, Baldoni attorney Bryan Freedman has his own POV on what the dismissal, , really means.
“Ms. Lively and her team’s predictable declaration of victory is false, so let us be clear about the latest ruling,” the Liner Freedman Taitelman + Cooley LLP co-founder said earlier Wednesday. “While the Court dismissed the defamation related claims, the Court has invited us to amend four out of the seven claims against Ms. Lively, which will showcase additional evidence and refined allegations.”
Freedman added: “This case is about false accusations of sexual harassment and retaliation and a nonexistent smear campaign, which Ms. Lively’s own team conveniently describes as “untraceable” because they cannot prove what never happened.”
“Most importantly, Ms. Lively’s own claims are no truer today than they were yesterday, and with the facts on our side, we march forward with the same confidence that we had when Ms. Lively and her cohorts initiated this battle and look forward to her forthcoming deposition, which I will be taking,” the attorney went on to declare. Lively is penciled in to sit for that deposition in the next month or so, I hear. “We are grateful for the organic show of support from the public and for the dedication of the Internet sleuth community who continue to cover the case with discernment and integrity.”
(L-R) Justin Baldoni, Blake Lively
Getty Images
On the other side of the legal divide, the NOW’s Deputy General Counsel, David McCraw took to the publication’s internal Slack to discuss being dismissed from Baldoni’s now skunked countersuit. Praising the work that went into the December 21 ‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine’ feature on Lively’s CRD filing, McCraw went very very big picture:
I’m sure by now you have all seen the good news about yesterday’s decision to dismiss the libel case against The New York Times that was filed by actor Justin Baldoni and his associates. Our journalists went out and covered carefully and fairly a story of public importance, and the court recognized that the law is designed to protect just that sort of journalism. We will continue to stand up in court for our journalism and for our journalists when their work comes under attack.
Blake Lively went to a California civil rights agency to lodge an official complaint that she had been discriminated against by Justin Baldoni and his associates during the filming of “It Ends With Us” and that they had launched a smear campaign to harm her after the release of the movie. The public has a right to know about official proceedings brought before a government agency, which is why the law in every state protects journalists when they report on an official proceeding. We also reviewed in our reporting a trove of internal messages among Baldoni and his team, which showed that they were behind the online smear campaign launched against Lively. As the judge said, those messages fully supported the facts we presented in our coverage detailing Baldoni’s attempt to take Lively down online. Baldoni and his Hollywood lawyers obviously thought they could use the courts to undermine that reporting; they were wrong.
If the plaintiffs decide to appeal, we are confident that today’s decision dismissing The Times will stand up on any further review.
One final thought: At a time when other news organizations are deciding to settle baseless claims rather than stand up for press freedom in court, the Baldoni decision is a good reminder that The Times has decided that just the opposite approach is needed at this moment in American history.
Donald Trump inference aside, Baldoni has less than two weeks to file a new amended complaint against Lively – but, as has been evident for a while, two weeks can be a very long time in this case.
