Blake Lively fights back against alleged smear campaign led by Justin Baldoni's lawyer

Blake Lively’s legal team recently filed a motion seeking sanctions against Bryan Freedman, lead attorney for actor and director Justin Baldoni, accusing him of conducting a “press tour” designed to damage Lively’s reputation ahead of trial.

Meanwhile, Lively’s lawyers claim Freedman violated a court order intended to limit pre-trial publicity.

According to the filing, Freedman made “biased and inflammatory pre-trial indictments of Ms. Lively’s character, credibility and reputation” through interviews with media outlets including TMZ, People, Billy Bush, and Megyn Kelly.

In one such interview, Freedman suggested to TMZ that Lively is “afraid of the truth” and implied she might not attend her deposition, which she did on 31st August.

The following day, Baldoni’s attorneys filed a motion related to a discovery dispute and attached a sealed 292-page transcript of Lively’s deposition as an exhibit.

In their filing, Lively’s lawyers accused Baldoni’s team of attempting to manipulate public perception:

“The Wayfarer Defendants and their counsel hope to make Ms. Lively defend the continued sealing of the transcript so they can advance a false narrative that Ms. Lively is afraid of her deposition testimony becoming public, which is entirely untrue and deeply harmful,” they wrote.