Justin BaldoniThe former publicist wants it to be known that she was not involved in the alleged defamation conspiracy Blake Lively — and in fact, she's now suing the women Blake accused… claiming they also tried to destroy her reputation.
Here's the deal… Stephanie Jones is a major celebrity publicist who represents people who like him Tom Brady, Russell Wilson, Venus Williams and Baldoni…at least until this year. In the lawsuit she just filed, Jones names her ex-employee Jennifer Abel was assigned to handle Baldoni's publicity, and it was Abel's decision to hire him Melissa Nathana crisis PR specialist when the “It Ends With Us” feud began to erupt.
Remember, as TMZ first reported, Blake's two publicists are Jennifer and Melissa accused of starting the smear campaign.
Now, in new documents obtained by TMZ, Stephanie says that Jennifer and Melissa's real goal was to “destroy Jones' reputation in order to take over their clients and profit from Abel's planned exit from Jones' PR firm.” .”
Her lawsuit includes alleged text messages between the women … one of which shows Melissa telling Jennifer, “I know. And once you’re gone, we’ll run accounts together, make really good money and be happy.”
Others discuss Jennifer leaving Jones' company and stealing Baldoni as a client.
In the lawsuit, Stephanie emphasizes that her ex-employee didn't even like Jennifer Baldoni. An alleged text message she sent said: “I can’t stand him. He's so pompous. …You’re not that important and no one cares how hard your life is.”
Apparently Jennifer also wrote that Baldoni needed to be taken down a notch. Predicting that “It Ends With Us” could bomb at the box office, she wrote: “He needs to be humiliated. If this film is a failure, he will try to blame everyone around him.”
But Stephanie claims Jennifer and Melissa also had their knives out at her – in the suit she says they made media contacts to spread negative stories about her. Specifically, she quotes one Article with the caption: “Who’s Afraid of Stephanie Jones?”
There are other texts in which Jennifer is visibly enthusiastic about the plan to screw her boss. For example, she allegedly texted Melissa, “We're going to war… I feel so alive hahahahah.” And Melissa responded, telling Jennifer that she was leaving Stephanie's company “with a bang.”
According to the lawsuit, Stephanie discovered Jennifer's conspiracy in August — for allegedly downloading confidential company documents — and fired her. It appears that Stephanie found all of these text messages through a search of Jennifer's devices after she was locked up.
Stephanie is suing Justin, Jennifer, Melissa and Justin's company Wayfarer Studios for defamation, breach of contract and more. She wants the court to award unspecified damages that she says her company suffered.
Her attorney Kristin Tahler tells TMZ… “This group has harshly denounced and disparaged Stephanie Jones and her company for months for financial gain, to settle personal scores and most recently to distract from their shameful denigration of Blake Lively,” she adds adding that Stephanie is only suing to “restore the reputation she has worked for decades to build.”