Justin Baldoni Insists “Pietistic” New York Times Stay In Blake Lively Clash; Gray Lady Wants Dismissal

deadline.com:

Going into full anti-MSM mode, Justin Baldoni is determined the New York Times will not get itself dismissed from the It Ends With Us star and director’s sprawling $400 million and counting legal brawl with Blake Lively. “This dispute should be resolved by a jury at trial,” a very wide-ranging March 14 memorandum of law in opposition from Baldoni, his Wayfarer Studios, CEO Jamey Health, financier Steve Saraowitz and publicists Jennifer Abel and Melissa Nathan retorts of the Gray Lady’s February 28th instigated attempt to be dropped from the matter long before the March 29, 2026 starting trial kicks off. “A pietistic bastion of the media establishment, the NYT has long presumed itself beyond accountability,” sounding very MAGA the 36-page memo filed in federal court in NYC also states. “Not here.

The NYT went past merely reporting on Plaintiff Blake Lively’s (“Lively”) California Civil Rights Department Complaint (“CRD Complaint”) and actively vouched for the veracity of its false narrative.” “The fair report privilege the NYT seeks to hide behind does not protect it from liability for maliciously colluding with Lively and her cohort to publish a false and defamatory hit piece about the Wayfarer Parties, wrongly casting them as villains and making them scapegoats for Lively’s well-publicized media missteps.” Poll vaulting off the December 21 posted NYT expose ‘We Can Bury Anyone: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine’ about Lively’s December 20 complaint filed with the California Civil Rights department alleging sexual harassment and retaliation with “astroturfing” and online “social manipulation,” Baldoni and his inner circle originally sued the paper with their own claims of libel, fraud and more on New Year’s Eve for