Justin Baldoni’s lawyers have subpoenaed Taylor Swift as a witness in the ongoing lawsuits between Baldoni and Blake Lively. Currently this week, there is a pretrial discovery hearing on what documents will be subpoenaed. The part of the discovery hearing getting the most attention (obviously) is regarding Taylor Swift’s involvement in It Ends With Us, and what kind of text messages and paper trail might exist between Taylor and Blake re: Baldoni or IEWU. A few days ago, Baldoni’s lawyer made an explosive allegation that Blake and/or Taylor deleted texts about the case, and that Blake was basically blackmailing Taylor to get her public support, the threat being that Blake would reveal Taylor’s texts if Taylor didn’t publicly support her. Well, the judge just threw out the letter from Baldoni’s lawyer.
Whether they like it or not, Blake Lively and Taylor Swift’s friendship and any bad blood between them this week became the heart of Lively’s ongoing legal battle with It Ends With Us co-star and director Justin Baldoni – but it didn’t last long. On Wednesday, lawyers for Lively condemned allegations in a letter by Baldoni’s main attorney that the actress’ team threatened the “Shake It Off” superstar singer with a public drubbing if she didn’t offer a full-throated public support for her old pal as “scandalous” and “completely false.”
On Thursday, just after Bryan Freedman reiterated his claim about the requested support and threats to “release private text messages of a personal nature” if the recently subpoenaed Swift wasn’t publicly behind Lively, the judge in the multimillion-dollar suit between the IEWU stars shut the whole sideshow down.
“The Letter is improper and must be stricken,” ordered Judge Lewis J. Liman in response to a motion by Lively’s side filed mere hours after Freedman’s letter. “It is irrelevant to any issue before this Court and does not request any action from this Court.”
That’s not all though – as the judge was striking down Freedman’s claim, Freedman added more details to the claim. Freedman claims he has a source in Taylor Swift’s camp, and the source revealed that Taylor and Blake spoke on the phone on Valentine’s Day for an hour, and on that same day, Blake’s lawyers contacted Taylor’s lawyers, demanding that Taylor “make a social media statement in support of Ms. Lively given her absence from the Super Bowl that year, and stated that if Ms. Swift failed to do so, Ms. Lively would release ‘ten years’ of private texts with Ms. Swift.” During the phone call with Taylor, Blake also allegedly asked her to delete the past five months of texts between them. Lively’s lawyers once again denied all of this, claiming it was all based on triple hearsay. Speaking of triple hearsay, People Magazine published this fascinating exclusive on the heels of all of these shenanigans:
Blake Lively and Taylor Swift’s friendship has reached a low point. As Lively’s legal battle against Justin Baldoni continues to heat up, multiple sources tell PEOPLE exclusively that the actress’s relationship with Swift is struggling as the singer faces a subpoena by Baldoni’s legal team.
“Their friendship has halted,” says a source close to Swift. “Taylor wants no part in this drama.”
Another insider says that Lively, 37, and Swift, 35 — whose friendship can be documented going back to 2014 — are indeed “taking some space,” but adds that they are “not no longer friends.”
In late April, a source told PEOPLE that Swift “was really hurt” after being implicated in Lively’s legal fight but that the stars were working to “put it all behind them.” According to a complaint Baldoni filed in January, Lively referred to the pop star as one of her “dragons” in an alleged text exchange. Now, however, a source close to the legal battle says the subpoena — which was served on May 8 — has “fractured” the “fragile peace” between Lively and Swift, who is godmother to the actress’ four kids with her husband, Ryan Reynolds, 48.
Multiple sources also tell PEOPLE that Lively’s friendship with another longtime pal, Gigi Hadid, has cooled in recent months.
“Gigi feels terrible that her close friend is being pulled into the legal drama,” says a Hadid source. Adds another friend of the model, 30: “Gigi is closer to Taylor and has definitely taken her side in this whole drama. Gigi doesn’t want to get involved in this whole ordeal, but she is closer to Taylor and has distanced herself from Blake although she still considers her a friend.”
Freedman’s allegations had a lot of people making some wild inferences, like “oh, so you’re saying Taylor is now helping Baldoni?” No. No one believes that. Taylor is always going to be on Taylor’s side. Taylor is for Taylor, full stop. Taylor doesn’t appreciate being dragged into Blake’s mess, just like Taylor doesn’t appreciate the fact that Blake has been leveraging Taylor’s name for years. And we don’t even know what’s happened behind-the-scenes. As I’ve maintained, if Taylor wanted to show even a modicum of support for Blake, she would have. It matters that Taylor has done nothing. It matters that on the heels of Baldoni’s lawyers making some wild accusations of behind-the-scenes threats and extortion, “sources” are telling People Mag that Taylor doesn’t want to have anything to do with Blake. It also matters that Taylor’s clique is cutting ties with Blake too.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images.
