Top Hollywood Publicist Alleged to Have Hid Evidence About Role In Celebrity Smear Sites

Months after Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni settled their It Ends with Us dispute, a related case involving top Hollywood publicists continues to offer its own fresh revelations. Stephanie Jones, who handled PR for both Baldoni and the movie’s production company Wayfarer Studios, has been pursuing a suit in federal court against Baldoni’s crisis communications strategists and former clients on the film project, alleging defamation as well as other claims.

Revealing documents from Jones’ litigation previously became central to Lively’s own assertions in court. They have also exposed the alleged workings of a sprawling secret smear machine, reliant on anonymously operated websites filled with damaging assertions, whose impact radius spans from Rebel Wilson and Andrew Huberman to Scooter Braun and Travis Scott.

In new filings, Jones argues that defendant Melissa Nathan, another prominent entertainment industry publicist, committed perjury and hid evidence about her role in creating the sites, including one which targeted Jones. She cites new evidence — including texts, emails and invoices — obtained from a former Nathan employee at her firm, The Agency Group PR, known as TAG.

Nathan, who infamously wrote a colleague “you know we can bury anyone,” has previously sworn under oath that she hasn’t been involved in the creation of the websites, which often peddled defamatory claims. According to new exhibits in Jones‘ filing, a paper trail suggests otherwise, detailing in one instance how the employee, who appears to have been responsible for drafting copy for the websites, received direct editing instructions from Nathan to make the material “a lot more meaty” and to keep in mind that it “has to also be good enough for us to be able to point a journalist towards.”

Jones’ litigation compares contemporaneous notes taken by Nathan’s employee from a May 2024 phone call with her boss about a planned site attacking Jones with similar resulting language on an anonymized site activated two days later. The filings also detail how they worked with fixer Jed Wallace, another defendant, to publish the material with the intent that it would be untraceable. (Wallace has also denied involvement in the purported scheme.)

Nathan didn’t respond to a request for comment.

A digital forensics consultant hired by Jones’ lawyers previously submitted a report, filed in court, analyzing raw online data to argue that Wallace is, in fact, connected to her site as well as a slew of others. Now, an email sent by the TAG employee to Nathan on Oct. 18, 2024 — titled “Items I’m working on at the moment” adds new information, including repeatedly referencing Wallace’s seeming participation.

The note refers to “Site Drafting” for “Alexander Brothers,” a reference to the former New York City real estate agents who were later found guilty of running a sex-trafficking conspiracy. The New York Times has reported that TAG worked with them around the time a “mysterious website suddenly appeared” which “purported to expose a conspiracy meant to take down the brothers.” The email also references “Site Drafting & Updates” for a project labeled “Amanda Ghost,” likely the endeavor which has since become subject to its own ongoing case in which Wilson appears to have been involved in disparaging a producer on her movie The Deb. (The TAG employee writes of the line item: “this is probably part of what Rebel is paying [for].”) Wilson has repeatedly denied the claims.

The TAG employee’s correspondence also points to other possible clients, including some previously unreported. One is “LMDV / Jessica Serfaty,” enumerating “Calls / Crisis Plan / Site Drafting & Updates.” This is a likely reference to the billionaire sunglasses heir Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio and the actress-influencer Jessica Serfaty. In July 2024 she accused her then-fiancée of abuse, then quickly retracted the allegation. A month later Serfaty claimed she’d discovered a tracking device in her car. (Shortly after the TAG employee sent the October 2024 email, Del Vecchio was reported to be under investigation by Italian prosecutors for his connection to a private investigation firm which had allegedly hacked state security databases.)

Neither Del Vecchio nor Serfaty responded to THR.

Another item listed in the TAG employee’s email is “Hiya,” likely referring to the zero-sugar vitamin brand Hiya Health. The staffer doesn’t explicitly refer to drafting a website but does describe working on a “Crisis Scenario Plan.” Hiya didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Tamara Rubin, who has long run a popular online resource called Lead Safe Mama focused on lead poisoning and exposure risk from consumer products, earlier told THR that a website targeting her materialized in October 2024, along with defaming edits to her Wikipedia page.

Rubin had said the experience had “substantially impacted” both her business and her personal life, but she didn’t know who was behind it. Lead Safe Mama had reported that Hiya vitamins tested positive in a lab result for lead and other heavy metals weeks before the anonymous attacks against her. (The company responded directly to her days after she published her findings.)

“It’s a relief to finally know, to have that closure,” Rubin says now to THR, explaining she believes the new Jones filing identifies the culprit in her own case. “It’s also horrific, the length that a children’s vitamin company would go to discredit me.” She notes that Hiya was at the time in the process of being acquired in a deal with another nutritional supplements company that would close in December 2024 for $205 million. “They were trying to protect the bottom line.”