Nearly a week after Blake Lively accused her co-star Justin Baldoni of sexual harassment and starting a campaign of public smears against her, Baldoni's attorney says the actor/director intends to respond with a countersuit of his own.
NBC News asked lawyer Bryan Freedman in an interview that aired Thursday, Jan. 2, if his client intends to sue Lively, and he said, "Absolutely... yes."
"We plan to release every single text messages between the two of them," Freedman told NBC News. "We want the truth to be out there. We want the documents to be out there. We want people to make their determination based on receipts."
Although Freedman did not specify when Baldoni's countersuit will be filed, a person familiar with the case stated that it would be filed "soon."
It will address Lively's complaints from December 20, in which she stated that she experienced "grief, fear, trauma, and extreme anxiety" as a result of Baldoni's alleged actions during the recording and promotion of It Ends with Us.
According to Lively's complaint, he quizzed her about her personal sex life, showed her sexual photos and videos, and tried to incorporate intimate moments in the movie that she had not initially consented to.
Additionally, she asserted that Baldoni, his publicist Jennifer Abel, and Melissa Nathan of the crisis agency TAG PR tried to "destroy" her reputation by working with the media and manipulating social media.
Baldoni filed a libel suit against The New York Times on Tuesday, December 31, after the publication of an article titled "‘We Can Bury Anyone’: Inside a Hollywood Smear Machine" on December 21.
According to the lawsuit, the newspaper's piece about Lively's lawsuit and behind-the-scenes issues on It Ends with Us contained "'cherry-picked' and altered communications stripped of necessary context and deliberately spliced to mislead."
The New York Times defended its article as "meticulously and responsibly reported" in response to Baldoni's suit.
In a statement Lively shared with The New York Times, she said, "I hope that my legal action helps pull back the curtain on these sinister retaliatory tactics to harm people who speak up about misconduct and helps protect others who may be targeted."
In an exclusive interview with the outlet on December 29, Freedman stated that Baldoni's lawsuit against Lively will constitute "a deliberate pursuit of truth."
“This lawsuit will uncover and expose the false and destructive narrative that was intentionally engineered by a trusted media publication who relied upon nefarious sources and neglected a thorough fact checking process to confirm the validity of these texts,” he said at that time.
