Justin Baldoni Files Amended Blake Lively Lawsuit, Here's How It All Started

Justin Baldoni is now claiming to have cold, hard proof that Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds were targeting him months

before Lively filed her explosive Christmas lawsuit against him.

The actor and director is updating his ongoing legal battle, armed with fresh evidence

that he says confirms a pattern of “malicious and reckless” defamation dating back to at least October 31, 2024.

This revelation could drastically shift the course of Baldoni’s lawsuit, which already includes hefty demands for financial compensation.

According to newly obtained documents from TMZ, Baldoni’s team claims that a clue hidden in the metadata of an article by *The New York Times* (NYT) proves that Lively’s legal attack on him was planned much earlier than she let on.

Specifically, Baldoni’s team found that the article in question, which detailed Lively’s lawsuit, contained metadata pointing to a ‘message-embed-generator’ that was timestamped for October 31, 2024. This date, according to Baldoni’s legal team, indicates that the NYT began preparing the article and associated materials at least several weeks before Lively filed the lawsuit in late December 2024.

In layman’s terms, Baldoni’s team argues that this technical evidence reveals that the NYT and Lively had been collaborating on building their case against him long before the public announcement of the lawsuit. The date, in their view, marks the development of key components of the article, which prominently featured allegedly doctored text messages between Baldoni and Lively.

The lawsuit’s update is a direct response to these findings, which Baldoni’s legal team says prove that Lively, her representatives, and the NYT worked together to carry out a premeditated defamation campaign. “The evidence strips away the legal shields that Lively, the Times, and other Lively Parties were likely relying on to protect their malicious acts of defamation,” Baldoni’s legal team states. They suggest that the actions taken by Lively and the Times reflect a coordinated effort to damage Baldoni’s reputation.

As previously reported, Baldoni is suing the *New York Times* for $250 million, accusing the outlet of manipulating text messages and working with Lively to support the claims in her lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges that the newspaper selectively published and edited the text messages to create a misleading narrative. In addition to the defamation claims against the NYT, Baldoni has also filed a $400 million lawsuit against Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, accusing them of orchestrating a complex web of lies and false accusations aimed at destroying his reputation.

Bryan Freedman, Baldoni’s attorney, explained the decision to amend the lawsuit, stating, “The overwhelming amount of new proof that has come to light made this a logical next step.” Freedman further emphasized that the newly discovered evidence confirmed what they had suspected all along: that Lively and her team had been plotting to damage Baldoni’s reputation for months. He also pointed to the public interest surrounding the case as shedding light on the situation, including the role that Lively and her team played in the smear campaign.

One of the most notable updates in the amended lawsuit is a detailed, 150-page timeline that lays out the entire sequence of events, starting as far back as January 1, 2019. The timeline reportedly tracks every move in the saga, from Baldoni’s early interactions with Colleen Hoover, the author of *It Ends With Us*, to the events leading up to the filing of Lively’s lawsuit in December 2024. This timeline is being presented as a key piece of evidence to demonstrate that the alleged campaign against Baldoni was years in the making.

The battle between Baldoni and Lively has taken a dramatic turn with this new evidence, adding another layer of complexity to the ongoing legal proceedings. As of now, Blake Lively’s representatives have not publicly responded to the updated lawsuit, but given the high stakes involved, a response is expected.