Texts link Justin Baldoni’s crisis PR pro to secret ‘smear’ sites, complaint alleges

Melissa Nathan, the crisis management public relations pro hired by actor-director Justin Baldoni amid his lengthy legal feud with actor Blake Lively, is in the hot seat after Baldoni’s former publicist claimed that Nathan played a key role in operating a network of anonymous “smear” websites.

The publicist, Stephanie Jones, filed an initial complaint in New York Supreme Court in December 2024, accusing Baldoni’s crisis PR team of waging a coordinated effort to undermine her and deflect blame for what she called a retaliatory smear campaign targeting Lively.

But new documents filed last week brought front and center a “key question from the outset of this case”: Who was behind the creation of anonymous websites that popped up in May 2024 and accused Jones of “holding clients hostage” and leaking their secrets?

Nathan did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment Friday. But in a deposition, she said she was absolutely not the mastermind behind the now-defunct stephaniejonesleaks.com.

In the recent filing, Jones claims she repeatedly sought communications that could support her suspicions about the website’s origin, and last week received documents from Katherine Case, a former employee of Jones’ PR firm, Jonesworks, who subsequently worked for Nathan’s crisis management firm, the Agency Group.

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Those documents, the filing alleges, show Nathan repeatedly testified falsely about the websites, and confirm that “Melissa Nathan was directly involved in a scheme to utilize untraceable websites to destroy the reputation of her competitors and those adverse to her clients. Stephanie Jones and Jonesworks were among her victims.”

In alleged text messages between Nathan and Case included in court documents, Nathan appears to have offered Case “three or four grand” to make the website copy tarnishing Jones’ reputation “a lot more meaty” — “good enough for us to be able to point a journalist towards.”

Nathan also appears to direct Case to discuss “holding clients hostage” and detail how people are “scared of” Jones, the documents allege.

Nathan is alleged to have instructed Case to write copy that would “follow along the lines of a purported ‘whistleblower’ narrative.” In Case’s notes from a subsequent phone call, she allegedly wrote, “Copy for the website along the lines of — I can’t sit and watch this woman continue to do this, this is what she does ... it’s now a time where I can speak my truth about what I saw there.”

The filing claims that a record from Zelle, a money-transferring service, shows a subsequent payment to Case in the amount of $4,000 from “Melissa E. Nathan.”

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The websites weren’t a one-off, according to the filing. They were allegedly one of Nathan’s specialties, and a hot commodity among embattled celebrities.

Three months after the Jones website went live, Nathan allegedly texted “Pitch Perfect” star Rebel Wilson, who was involved in a dispute with producer Amanda Ghost over Wilson’s directorial debut, the 2024 musical “The Deb.”

“Nathan quoted Wilson $110,000 for an untraceable site with a satellite, ghost server, ghost hosting, full build, maintaining, and full algorithmic push across all platforms ... for 3 months,” the filing alleges. “The next day Nathan texted Case, ‘Rebel wants a one of those sites.’ ”