Justin Baldoni and his team just launched a website in an apparent attempt to bolster his accusations against Blake Lively — but why now?
Baldoni’s website first appeared on Saturday, Feb. 1, just two days before the It Ends with Us costars, who are locked in a contentious legal battle, are scheduled to appear in a Feb. 3 pre-trial conference that is slated to hash out Lively’s prospective request for a gag order.
As legal expert Gregory Doll — a lawyer and partner at Doll Amir & Eley who is not representing either party — tells PEOPLE, Lively’s request may have been an attempt to thwart Baldoni, 41, and his team from doing exactly this.
“One of the issues raised in the letter briefs for Monday seeking to prevent Baldoni’s attorney from speaking about the case publicly is his stated intention to launch this very type of website,” Doll tells PEOPLE after the launch of the site, which links to an updated complaint filed on Jan. 31.
The first button on the site links to the amended version of the complaint that Baldoni and five other plaintiffs filed against Lively in response to Lively’s initial filing against him.
The second button on the newly created website, titled “Timeline of Relevant Events,” is an exhibit to the amended complaint, and it is a 168-page “timeline” that uses texts, emails and more correspondences — some of which have not previously been made public — shared in chronological order to paint Baldoni’s version of the stars’ behind-the-scenes conflict.
By publishing the amended complaint and its exhibit — and the alleged messages they contain — online ahead of the pre-trial court appearance, Baldoni and his team have ensured that they will be seen by the public eye, potentially quashing Lively’s request for a gag order before it even has a chance to succeed in court.
“Launching it now accomplishes two things,” Doll explains. “One, it gets the website content out to the public before there is any order preventing Baldoni’s counsel from doing so; and two, it may persuade the judge that there is no reason to enter any type of gag order against Baldoni’s counsel because the info is already in the public domain anyway.”
The behind-the-scenes conflict between the It Ends with Us leads was first confirmed in December 2024 when, after months of online speculation about tension between them, Lively, 37, sued Baldoni and his production company Wayfarer Studios (plus It Ends with Us’ lead producer Jamey Heath, Baldoni’s publicist Jennifer Abel, crisis publicist Melissa Nathan and more), alleging sexual harassment and a smear campaign launched in retaliation for speaking out about alleged misconduct.
Baldoni has denied the sexual harassment allegations, and subsequently countersued Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds and their publicist Leslie Sloane, as well as Sloane’s PR firm Vision PR, Inc., on accusations of defamation and extortion.
Both cases in Lively v. Wayfarer Studios et al. are now scheduled for trial on March 9, 2026, Judge Lewis J. Liman outlined in an order filed Monday, Jan. 27. Liman is the same judge that Lively’s team asked to address “the appropriate conduct of counsel” after Baldoni’s lawyer Bryan Freedman released footage from the It Ends with Us set in an attempt to refute some of Lively’s claims — and announced plans to share evidence in support of Baldoni on a website.
In their letter to Liman, Lively and her team stated that “federal litigation must be conducted in court and according to the relevant rules of professional conduct” and claimed Freedman’s actions risked “tainting” a potential jury pool.
Another Baldoni attorney, Kevin Fritz, responded in a Jan. 23 letter, calling the move an “intimidation tactic” and asked Liman to reject any prospective gag order Lively’s team may request. Fritz also argued that Lively “initiated” a “media feeding frenzy” by allegedly supplying The New York Times with a copy of her initial complaint.
