Blake Lively may be calling her legal settlement with Justin Baldoni a win … but Baldoni’s attorney says it’s really a surrender before the spotlight got too hot.
Bryan Freedman tells TMZ the “real reason” Blake settled was because she was terrified of taking the witness stand and facing cross-examination at trial.
Freedman says … “Part of the reason Blake settled is because she was scared to take the witness stand at trial. She did not want to face cross examination by anyone because that would require her to tell the truth.”
He continued … “Blake lied about telling Sony to destroy the dailies. She lied that she never told Colleen Hoover to unfollow Justin Baldoni. In her deposition, Colleen said Blake asked her to unfollow him. And there were more lies.”
Freedman then took aim at the outcome of the case itself, adding … “Bottom line … Blake filed a claim for $300 million and she ended up with nothing. If this is a resounding victory, what does a defeat look like?”
And he closed with one final shot at Blake’s public stance throughout the case … saying, “If she’s doing this for survivors of sexual assault and sexual harassment and retaliation as she says, then why don’t you take the stand at trial and prove it to the world? A trial would have exposed her lies and the entire smear she was talking about in her interviews that she did.”
In response to Freedman’s comments, Blake’s legal team told TMZ … “I guess he’s no longer ‘ecstatic’ about the settlement.”
The “It Ends With Us” stars agreed to a settlement on Monday after a drawn-out legal war in a last-minute move before the trial was supposed to begin — just 2 weeks from now — and most legal experts say there would have been no winners. Both Justin and Blake would have been raked over the coals.
