The New York Times is pushing back against claims made by Justin Baldoni in his ongoing legal drama with Blake Lively.
In an amended version of his $400 million defamation lawsuit, filed on February 1, Baldoni alleged that Lively provided the newspaper with early access to her sexual harassment complaint.
A spokesperson for the publication, per JustJared, dismissed the claim as false, stating, “The Baldoni/Wayfarer legal filings are rife with inaccuracies about The New York Times, including, for example, the bogus claim that The Times had early access to Ms. Lively’s state civil rights complaint.”
They also criticised Baldoni’s team for relying on “amateur internet sleuths” whose findings they insist are incorrect.
For reference, Baldoni’s legal team cited an analysis of the article’s HTML source code, which allegedly contained a date of “2024-10-31” — suggesting The Times had access to the complaint weeks before publishing their December 2024 article.
The Times responded that the “December 10” timestamp seen in their document was generated by Google software and had no connection to when they actually received Lively’s complaint.
Baldoni’s legal team, however, remains unconvinced, arguing that the outlet had already begun crafting a “defamatory” article by October 31. They suggested that The Times had developed a specialised tool to highlight “cherry-picked and misleadingly reframed” text messages central to the story.
