Taylor Swift’s Ties to Blake Lively’s and Justin Baldoni’s It Ends With Us Lawsuits, Explained

Meanwhile, Lively’s legal team officially requested Freedman’s letter to be tossed out, writing, “The apparent intent of the Freedman Letter is to launder scandalous and defamatory allegations about Ms. Lively and opposing counsel into the press by abusing the Court’s docket.”

According to People, Freedman then filed a signed affidavit on May 15 under the penalty of perjury, claiming he had an hour-long phone call with a “person very closely linked to Taylor Swift” on February 14. According to Freedman, the source shared the details of a conversation between Lively’s and Swift’s legal teams.

Per the affidavit, Lively’s lawyer allegedly “requested, on Ms. Lively’s behalf, that Taylor Swift 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 ‘10 years’ of private texts with Ms. Swift.”

The alleged source also claimed Swift was allegedly asked to delete their text messages from the past “four or five months.”

Lively’s lawyer, Gottlieb, described the affidavit as “another bogus filing designed for clickbait” in a statement to People, adding, “We reiterate our unequivocal denial.” Furthermore, Gottlieb said Freedman has now “admitted” his allegations “rely completely upon a source, no matter who it is, that doesn’t even claim to have witnessed the conversations that Freedman describes, making this triple-hearsay statement as unreliable as information reported from children in a game of telephone.”

Gottlieb continued, “These claims remain completely untethered from reality—to be clear: The conversations as described did not happen, and we will hold Mr. Freedman accountable for his misconduct.”

According to People, the judge granted Lively’s motion to strike Freedman’s letter and affidavit, calling them “improper” and “irrelevant to any issue before this Court.”

May 12 and 13, 2025: Swift’s law firm, Venable, asks for the courts to throw out another subpoena requesting all communications between the firm and Lively, Reynolds and/or their lawyer Michael Gottlieb, per Billboard.

“Venable had nothing to do with the film at issue or any of the claims or defenses asserted in the underlying lawsuit,” the firm wrote in the motion, per Billboard. “There is no reason for this subpoena other than to distract from the facts of the case and impose undue burden and expense on a non-party.”

Venable also called the subpoena a “fishing expedition” and an “abuse of the discovery process,” noting Baldoni’s team should seek any alleged documents straight from Lively and Reynolds.

May 9, 2025: TMZ reports that Baldoni’s team has subpoenaed Taylor Swift to testify during the trial. Swift’s team responded with the following statement:

“Taylor Swift never set foot on the set of this movie, she was not involved in any casting or creative decisions, she did not score the film, she never saw an edit or made any notes on the film, she did not even see ‘It Ends With Us’ until weeks after its public release, and was traveling around the globe during 2023 and 2024 headlining the biggest tour in history. The connection Taylor had to this film was permitting the use of one song, ‘My Tears Ricochet.’ Given that her involvement was licensing a song for the film, which 19 other artists also did, this document subpoena is designed to use Taylor Swift’s name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case.”