Posted on 02/28/2025 4:15:31 PM PST by CondoleezzaProtege
Blake Lively has hired a PR crisis manager with deep government ties as her legal battle with Justin Baldoni escalates. The actress, who is suing and being sued by her “It Ends With Us” director and co-star, is quietly working with Nick Shapiro, the CIA’s former deputy chief of staff and senior advisor to former director John Brennan.
Shapiro is not without controversy. He was one of a group of 51 former senior intelligence officials who signed the widely cited and subsequently criticized 2020 open letter stating that the Hunter Biden laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
Shapiro, who launched crisis PR firm 10th Avenue Consulting in 2015 after his lengthy tenure in the federal government, would seem an unconventional choice for Lively given that the spiraling legal morass has no obvious political ties. According to his bio, Shapiro “helped lead the Obama Administration’s response to the H1N1 Pandemic, the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting, the Gulf Oil Spill, the Boston Marathon Bombing, the Japan Earthquake, Tsunami and Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, as well as numerous cyber attacks, data breaches, wildfires, floods, and hurricanes.”
“The litigation team for Ms. Lively retained Mr. Shapiro to advise on the legal communications strategy for the ongoing sexual harassment and retaliation lawsuit occurring in the Southern District of New York,” says a member of the actress’ legal team at Willkie Farr & Gallagher.
(Excerpt) Read more at variety.com ...
How does Deep State have a dig in this hunt...
...dog in the hunt...
Wonder if DOGE could look into whether or not any taxpayer money has been going to WME...?
And, since I always strive to be fair, add CAA.
More on Shapiro...
Enty
@entylawyer
Nick Shapiro, the guy Blake Lively hired today to do crisis PR for her, led a team at Airbnb that covered up rapes, assaults and murders and paid off victims so they wouldn’t mention the name Airbnb. That is some female empowerment right there.
4:09 PM · Feb 28, 2025 86.7K Views
https://x.com/entylawyer/status/1895582066609438739
Enjoy your Oscar weekend, Hollyweird.
After Lively/Reynolds, le déluge.
That theory is certainly winning in the court of public opinion at the moment. Based on what is now public information, it is the theory that best fits the facts.
I would still raise the caution that this hasn’t yet gone to trial. We do not know what others will say. “Others” includes Sony execs, the rest of the cast and crew, the author of the book who was dickering for a bigger payday and rights to the sequel (which she had sold to Baldoni and Wayfarer), the agency that dumped Baldoni to keep BL and RR as clients, the PR and crisis management firms that are involved, and assorted innocent bystanders who witnessed something (e.g. Taylor Swift, who apparently didn’t like being set up as a prop in an ambush meeting, with Khaleesi later invoking her as one of the dragons who would destroy BL’s enemies).
There are a lot of moving parts. If this goes to trial, everyone will have to testify, or at least be deposed, under oath and under penalty of perjury. Baldoni and Wayfarer seem to have saved everything, and the lawyer isn’t taking prisoners. Hollywood has a long history of hushing these things up, but RR and BL made it personal, and when Baldoni didn’t cave after the first salvo, they set out to destroy him. Or at least that’s how it is shaping up now, but there is a long way to go. It’s rare for the mask to come off this completely.
A lot of casual Hollywood haters are still dismissing this as just more tinseltown trash of no wider interest. That’s a mistake. This is now a morality play that happens to involve actors, filmmakers, and the wider movie ecosystem. And as it looks now, it involves the cynical weaponization of spurious #MeToo claims for power plays. This is now a major kulturkampf moment, and therefore an opportunity.
It’s notable that after an initial flurry of reflexive “always believe the woman” statements of generic support following BL’s initial public filing, the woke feminist shakedown industry has largely gone silent. Aside from some clueless idiots jabbering on social media, the movement lefty types are in hiding. The grievance grifter industry is taking some serious hits below the waterline. I wish something like this had happened at Harvard or Stanford.
This has the potential to cast a long shadow. Conservatives have been losing the culture wars for a long time because so few know how to fight these battles. Justin Baldoni isn’t one of us, but if an honest man finds his hill to die on and plants his flag, we should take note.
But a lot of people still haven’t been heard from.
Deep State has a dog in the hunt.
To my mind that tells us everything we need to know.
In fact I’m really wondering if this latest hire was Lively/Reynolds’ choice, or it was shoved down their throats...
If the latter, well, ain’t that interesting...
In the culture wars, everything is connected. That doesn’t mean that every potential player is involved in every controversy, but as one moves up the chain, there is greater and greater concentration of money, power and control. The strings get entangled.
Conservatives have been losing the culture wars for a long time. One of the reasons is that conservatives are routinely blindsided by power plays and sometimes public attacks that they never saw coming. Our guys get involved in some kerfuffle and are holding their own. Then out of nowhere, there is a hit piece in the media. Or funding mysteriously dries up. Or allies suddenly switch sides. Or suddenly there are federal investigators prowling around and the IRS puts you into continuous audits. Etc. It’s amazing how fast problems cascade.
This has been going on for a long time. Obviously the left is networked in ways for which there is simply no counterpart on the right. Cconservatives find themselves isolated, targeted, and destroyed. Commitments disappear, funding disappears, jobs disappear, careers are destroyed. And if they try to investigate, they are labelled as conspiracy theory cranks. Nothing to see here, move along.
The Borg has many tentacles. We need serious, systematic decentralization in many domains.
Perez Hilton, via his YouTube channel, with a pithy, informative 19 minute synopsis if what just happened...
https://youtu.be/e7yp4GQvAR8?feature=shared
I hadn’t heard about the Delaware bit. Wasn’t that interesting...
Some people now have even more splainin’ to do...
Including Time magazine.
Their shamelessness knows no bounds. Re: Blake and Ryan’s romp & (con)quest for totalitarian PR domination.
That being said, the Time Magazine ‘influential’ nod was fair — not for any social justice philanthropy or fake auspice that was provided — but as acknowledgment of the cultural significance of Lively’s campaign to destroy Baldoni by weaponizing #MeToo, the legacy media, her celebrity and Hollywood mega mogul status — not to mention friendship with last year’s Person of the Year Taylor Swift.😳
Will look at the Perez link thanks for sharing.
Update and oh, this is good...
Zack Peter
@justplainzack
TMZ confirms (following Deadline’s initial report) that Taylor Swift’s team “voluntarily” provided the information Baldoni’s team was seeking, which is what prompted them to drop the subpoena.
You don’t need the subpoena anymore if the info is willingly given.
2:25 PM · May 22, 2025 61.5K Views
https://x.com/justplainzack/status/1925618972814172198
Allegedly, the person on Swift’s team who provided the info to Baldoni/Wayfarer’s team was none other than her father, Scott Swift.
A food for thought update from Lady Colin Campbell on X. Longer, so I’ll just post a link to it. Worth the read...
https://x.com/LadyColinCampb/status/1933163495727542782
I don’t share Lady Colin’s disdain for the Duke & Duchess of Sussex — but with regards to Hollywood, Heard v. Depp, and Lively v. Baldoni — this is the best and most thorough sum-up I’ve seen yet!
The CIA isn’t what it used to be. The story’s four months old and Baldoni’s not dead yet.
Maybe, given that the CIA guy worked for John Brennan, Blake should be watching her own back.
Update. Reads to me like another attempt to stifle free speech they don’t like. Is Disney on board with this...?
https://people.com/blake-lively-subpoenas-perez-hilton-candace-owens-justin-baldoni-case-11763867
Disney has got the enemedia playing ball.
Now it’s time to go after the internet’s version of the Baker Street Irregulars.
And maybe this is about more than just this case.
Maybe it’s about chilling all sorts of online speech.
Like bad movie reviews...
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