The ongoing It Ends With Us legal drama keeps getting messier, and now Scooter Braun (of Taylor Swift beef fame) is somehow involved. Per Deadline, a few days after two of defendant Justin Baldoni’s lawsuits were dismissed, Blake Lively’s lawyers sent a notice of subpoena to HYBE America, a K-pop subsidiary run by Braun. A representative told the outlet that Braun, who happens to be a good friend of Baldoni’s, is not being subpoenaed himself, but by association with HYBE’s American arm.
So, how did Taylor Swift’s former enemy No. 1 find himself in the middle of this sprawling legal battle? Deadline reports that HYBE America holds a majority stake in Melissa Nathan’s crisis PR firm, the Agency Group — the same firm Lively claims launched a smear campaign against her last year. By subpoenaing HYBE, Lively’s lawyers might be able to shore up documents that explain what exactly Baldoni hired Nathan for in the aftermath of It Ends With Us. Nathan is also a co-defendant in Lively’s original suit. (The Cut has reached out to Braun, Nathan, and Lively’s legal team for comment and will update this post if we hear back.)
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Braun’s subpoena comes on the heels of a dustup between Baldoni and Lively’s teams over Taylor Swift, who’s close with Lively and was herself subpoenaed by Baldoni’s team in May. After Swift’s reps made it clear that she had “never set foot on the set of the movie,” Baldoni’s team withdrew their subpoena. And yet, less than two weeks after Swift ended a yearslong battle over her masters that started with Braun, they’re once again in the same legal conversation. Hopefully she’s too busy celebrating her masters deal to care?
