A dramatic development has emerged in the ongoing It Ends with Us legal battle, with claims surfacing about potential threats involving Taylor Swiftโs private messages. However, Blake Livelyโs legal representatives have firmly denied these allegations.
The situation intensified when Justin Baldoniโs attorney Bryan Freedman recently named Swift as a key witness through a subpoena. Swiftโs team quickly fired back, telling โExtraโ that โThis document subpoena is designed to use Taylor Swiftโs name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case.โ
The plot thickened with Freedmanโs latest letter to Judge Liman, addressing Venable law firmโs motion to block the subpoena.

According to Freedmanโs letter, โThe Wayfarer Parties anticipate that Venableโs motion to quash will be mooted in short order, as their counsel and Venable are conferring in good faith. However, the Lively Defendantsโ insistence that the Subpoena seeks irrelevant information is wrong. The Subpoena aims to obtain discovery relating to witness tampering and evidence spoliation.โ
The letter continues with explosive claims: โSpecifically, the Wayfarer Partiesโ counsel are informed and believe, based on information from a source who is highly likely to have reliable information, that (i) Ms. Lively requested that Taylor Swift delete their text messages; (ii) Michael Gottlieb of Willkie Farr, counsel for the Lively Defendants, contacted a Venable attorney who represents Ms. Swift and demanded that Ms. Swift release a statement of support for Ms. Lively, intimating that, if Ms. Swift refused to do so, private text messages of a personal nature in Ms. Livelyโs possession would be released. The Wayfarer Partiesโ counsel are further informed and believe that a representative of Ms. Swift addressed these inappropriate and apparently extortionate threats in at least one written communication transmitted to Mr. Gottlieb. It is those communications that the Wayfarer Parties seek to obtain by way of subpoena, as they would evidence an attempt to intimidate and coerce a percipient witness in this litigation.โ

In a swift response to these allegations, Livelyโs attorney Mike Gottlieb has denied the claim: โThis is categorically false. We unequivocally deny all of these so-called allegations, which are cowardly sourced to supposed anonymous sources, and completely untethered from reality. This is what we have come to expect from the Wayfarer partiesโ lawyers, who appear to love nothing more than shooting first, without any evidence, and with no care for the people they are harming in the process. We will imminently file motions with the court to hold these attorneys accountable for their misconduct here.โ
When Swiftโs team addressed the subpoena last week, they made their position crystal clear, stating: โTaylor Swift never set foot on the set of this movie, she was not involved in any casting or creative decisions, she did not score the film, she never saw an edit or made any notes on the film, she did not even see โIt Ends with Usโ until weeks after its public release, and was traveling around the globe during 2023 and 2024 headlining the biggest tour in history.โ
Swiftโs representatives further emphasized, โThe connection Taylor had to this film was permitting the use of one song, โMy Tears Ricochet.โ Given that her involvement was licensing a song for the film, which 19 other artists also did, this document subpoena is designed to use Taylor Swiftโs name to draw public interest by creating tabloid clickbait instead of focusing on the facts of the case.โ
Gottlieb recently addressed speculation about potential subpoenas for Swift and Hugh Jackman, citing their close relationships with Blake and Ryan Reynolds.

Speaking to People magazine, Gottlieb stated, โItโs completely unclear what claims or defenses in the case any of these celebritiesโฆ have any relevance to at all. This is a case about what happened to Blake Lively when she raised claims of sexual harassment on the set. Itโs not a case about how songs were chosen for the movie. Itโs not a case about fictional Marvel characters in โDeadpoolโ movies.โ
He continued, โYou have to ask the question, then, why are these people being subpoenaed? Do they have any actual relevance to the case at hand? You canโt just go around subpoenaing people because theyโre famous and you think it will generate a bunch of headlines. And the federal courts donโt tolerate that kind of behavior.โ