Justin Baldoni’s Publicist Sued By Ex-Boss Over Blake Lively Fallout

Justin Baldoni isn’t the only one in the hot seat for the raging feud with his It Ends With Us costar Blake Lively: His publicist Jennifer Abel is now also being sued in connection with the alleged smear campaign against the actress, according to The New York Times.

Abel began repping Baldoni while an employee of A-list publicist Stephanie Jones. Jones sued Abel and crisis PR manager Melissa Nathan on Tuesday, both of whom Lively accused of coordinating a reputation hit on her, for launching the alleged attack from inside Jones’ PR firm Jonesworks.

Jones alleges that Abel stole documents from her firm in order to start her own PR business and claims Abel was going to blame her for the fallout amid Baldoni and Lively’s feud, according to the suit.

Jones says in the lawsuit that once she discovered that Abel was stealing company information over the summer, she fired her. Abel continued repping Baldoni, however, as she started her own firm. Jones claims that Baldoni breached his contract by leaving her firm to follow Abel. It was in examining Abel’s company phone following her exit that Jones discovered the damning text messages between Baldoni and his reps that show them celebrating the downfall of Lively’s public persona.

Prior to Jones’ suit, Abel wrote in defense of the text messages, “Yes, we rejoiced and joked in the fact that fans were recognizing our client’s heart and work without us having to do anything but keep our heads down and focus on positive interviews for our client,” but denied creating “negative press” for Lively as the “internet was doing the work for us.”

Jones isn’t buying that, according to the suit, in which she wrote that Abel and Nathan “secretly conspired” to blame her for the fallout over Lively, as well as steal her clients.

Baldoni, Abel, and Nathan’s lawyer Bryan Freedman have categorically denied the allegations in Lively’s suit, writing in a statement that the suit is “completely false, outrageous, and intentionally salacious,” and claiming the included text messages were “cherry picked.”

He also called the suit “yet another desperate attempt to ‘fix’ [Lively’s] negative reputation which was garnered from her own remarks and actions during the campaign for the film.”

As of the time of publication, Freedman has not yet addressed Jones’ lawsuit.