Thread by @ThatsMauvelous

Blake Lively's sexual harassment and retaliation complaint against Justin Baldoni is very well-evidenced for a pre-discovery complaint.

She quotes many juicy and damning text messages among Baldoni's publicity team.

How did she get those texts? It's a good tale, I think. 🧵

For this story, our protagonist is not Blake Lively or Justin Baldoni. In fact, our protagonist is not even mentioned by name in Lively's legal filings. Our protagonist is a veteran publicist by the name of Stephanie Jones.

Stephanie Jones is the founder and CEO of Jonesworks, a celebrity PR firm. Over the years, Jonesworks' client list has included such high-profile figures such as Venus Williams, Jeff Bezos, and Tom Brady. And since 2017, Justin Baldoni.

Jen Abel is also a publicist. Jen joined Jonesworks in July 2020. Apparently she did well; by 2021, she was getting a cut of profit distributions, and a promise of sale proceeds in the event the company was acquired.

Jen Abel assumed responsibility for the Baldoni account at Jonesworks, and was in this role during the events that gave rise to Blake Lively's legal complaint.

Apparently Stephanie and Jen's relationship soured a bit over the years. Jen submitted her resignation in July 2024. She stated that August 23 would be her last day of work for Jonesworks.

(The resignation letter seems to be sugary sweet, to be fair.)

On August 15 - one week before Jen Abel's scheduled departure - Business Insider published a hit piece on Stephanie Jones, based on a slew of anonymous sources. A sidenote on this BI piece: it inadvertently makes Stephanie Jones sound slightly awesome.

A specific allegation in the article: When one employee took a sick day, Jones ambushed her with a hostile midday facetime call because she did not believe the employee was actually sick.

What horror! The sick day is sacrosanct!

But Jones was correct. The employee had taken a sick day to attend a job interview.

(is this hit piece graf *the* perfect encapsulation of culture clash between no-bs gen x bosses and avocado toast millennial/zoomer workers?)

The BI piece was somewhat frivolous, but a hit piece is a hit piece, and Stephanie Jones suspected Jen Abel was involved.

Jones apparently fired Abel on August 21, two days before her planned final day of work.

I think this surprise early termination was important. I suspect that Jen Abel was planning to wipe her work phone before returning it on August 23. But because she was taken by surprise on August 21, she didn't get the chance.

When Jonesworks confiscated Jen Abel's old work phone, they found confirmation that Jen Abel was communicating with the Business Insider reporter in the leadup to the hit piece.

Jonesworks found a slew of other interesting text messages on Jen Abel's phone.

Some trash talk about clients, including Justin Baldoni.

And, of course, some remarkable gloating about the smear campaign against Blake Lively.

Jen Abel started a new PR firm. She took several Jonesworks employees and clients with her, including Justin Baldoni, who stopped paying Jonesworks' invoices partway thru an annual contract.

That was back in August.

All was quiet until the Friday night before Christmas, when Blake Lively's lawyers drop their extraordinarily-well-documented complaint against Justin Baldoni and many of his employees and publicists in the New York Times.

Jonesworks represented Baldoni during the events described in Blake Lively's lawsuit. Lively's complaint names several PR firms and publicists as defendants, including Jen Abel. But y'know who she doesn't name as a defendant? Stephanie Jones and Jonesworks.

How did Stephanie and Jonesworks evade the shotgun blast from Blake Lively's lawyers?

I think she rigged the whole thing.

She offered up Jen Abel's work phone, full of juicy evidence, probably in exchange for a commitment to keep Jonesworks out of the suit.

This neatly explains how Lively's attorneys got all those texts before discovery.

(Her lawyers claim they used a subpoena. I'm sure that is technically true, but I'm betting the subpoena was warmly received and enthusiastically fulfilled.)

We also see why Lively's lawyers were initially a bit cagey about the sourcing of the evidence. They wanted to keep the focus on Baldoni and Lively, rather than on the preternaturally agentic PR lady pulling the strings for revenge.

I don't think a Lively-Baldoni lawsuit would occur without this contribution by Stephanie Jones. The meat of Lively's legal complaint is text messages pulled from Jen Abel's work phone. Without those texts, there is probably no complaint. Certainly no NYT article.

Incidentally, this means that Jen Abel is now the somewhat-obvious proximate cause of a high-profile sexual harassment legal action against her own client.

What have we learned? First: the Lively-Baldoni complaint is best understood as an act of savage PR-lady-on-PR-lady violence. The actual plaintiff and defendant are practically incidental.

Second: when you hire dangerous professionals, pay them on time and in full.

They are, after all, dangerous and professional.

Third: Do not use a work phone to conspire against your employer.

Last, and most important: Do not cross Stephanie Jones, lest you find yourself mysteriously surrounded by angry wolves while Stephanie watches from a distance with a faint smile on her face.