Justin Baldoni sues ex-publicist amid $400,000,000 Blake Lively lawsuit in bombshell twist
Justin Baldoni and Jennifer Abel have filed a lawsuit against his ex-publicist Stephanie Jones.
In December 2024, Blake Lively filed a lawsuit against It Ends with Us co-star and director Justin Baldoni alleging sexual harassment and that he'd engaged in a campaign to ruin her reputation - allegations he vehemently denies.
Since then, multiple other lawsuits have been filed - including a $400 million defamation suit by Baldoni's team - and on Friday (March 21), Baldoni and Abel filed another complaint in New York federal court, alleging ex-publicist Stephanie Jones 'maliciously' leaked texts.
Who is Stephanie Jones?
When reports first started arising of a feud between Baldoni and Lively last summer, Jones represented Baldoni and his production company Wayfarer Studios. Abel was a partner of Jones - who runs Joneswork PR.
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Around the time Lively filed her lawsuit, Jones also filed a lawsuit suing Baldoni for breach of contract and alleging she'd fired Abel the summer previously, claiming she'd found evidence on Abel's company phone she was involved in the alleged smear campaign against Lively.
The latest lawsuit
The complaint filed yesterday alleges Jones leaked text messages which were cited in a New York Times article exposing 'private messages [detailing] an alleged campaign to tarnish Blake Lively'.
The complaint - seen by Variety - claims Jones' phone was seized in August 2024 and the text messages used within the explosive article appeared to have come from her device and that the article also followed shortly after Abel had told Jones she would be leaving Joneswork PR to go solo.
Not only this, but the complaint alleges Abel arrived at the Jonesworks office two days before she was set to leave only to be 'confronted by a physically imposing security guard, a forensic data extraction technical expert, and an attorney sitting at a conference table awash in documents' and told to hand over her devices.
The complaint alleges Abel was told Jonesworks would have 'grounds to sue' if she didn't allow them access to her personal laptop and Abel turned over her devices in the strong belief her computer had no 'proprietary information' of the sort on it and on the condition Jonesworks 'immediately release her personal cell phone number' so the company didn't have 'unrestrained access to its contents'.
Jonesworks allegedly agreed to release Abel's phone number if she went straight to a store, however, the complaint alleges after four hours this wasn't the case, with the complaint accusing Jones of 'double-crossing' Abel.
"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," it continues. "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 alleges Jones then 'turned over the contents of Abel's phone to Lively and her team without a subpoena'.
The lawsuit alleges this then led to the 'slice and dice' of Jones' 'communications to to construct a false narrative about the source of Lively’s bad publicity' accusing Jones of knowing 'full well that the blowback would engulf not only Abel but also her clients, Wayfarer and Baldoni'.
The lawsuit ultimately alleges Jones violated California labor laws covering Abel's employment but also conducted a 'malicious scheme' which resulted in 'Abel’s life ha[ving] been turned upside down, her career and reputation have been destroyed, her private information leaked, and her email inbox and social media pages filled with a daily stream of death threats and abuse'.
The complaint continues: "Although they did not yet know just how far Jones had taken things, Wayfarer and Baldoni considered her behavior to be a material breach of the Agreement and advised Jones that they were terminating the Jonesworks Agreement as of the end of August.
"In December 2024, the Wayfarer team finally learned the full extent of Jones’ betrayal. As a result of Jones’ deliberate and unlawful disclosure of their private information, which Lively’s team exploited to concoct a false and disturbing narrative about them, Wayfarer and Baldoni have been irrevocably harmed.
"Following the coordinated ‘drop’ of Lively’s fantastical Civil Rights Department Complaint and an explosive New York Times article, Wayfarer and Baldoni became objects of public scorn and derision. Baldoni has been wrongfully labeled as a sex pest, his accolades have been rescinded, and his future projects thrown into doubt.
"The same is true of Wayfarer, which has been falsely cast as an enabler of sexual misconduct and the architect of a vicious retaliation campaign against a victim of such misconduct."
Baldoni's team's response
Baldoni's attorney Bryan Freedman told Variety it's 'undeniable' Jones 'initiated this catastrophic sequence of events by violating the most basic of privacy rights, as well as any remaining trust her clients held'.
Freedman accused Jones of 'maliciously turning over communications' from Abel's phone and giving information to Lively's personal publicist Leslie Sloane and has a 'well-documented history of highly questionable conduct in the workplace'.
"Which the Lively parties would have seen with even the smallest amount of online research, yet they walked right into Ms. Jones’ ploy of bitter revenge against her most-trusted employee at the expense of her own long-term client," he added.
Freedman resolved: "We will not stop until our clients are cleared of all wrongdoing and compensated for the vast damages that they have incurred."
Jones' team's response
Kristin Tahler, partner at Quinn Emanuel, as a representative of Stephanie Jones, said in a statement to UNILAD: "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."
UNILAD has contacted representatives for Justin Baldoni, Blake Lively and Stephanie Jones for comment.
Topics: Celebrity, Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, Money
Poppy Bilderbeck