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Zack Peter recently shared insights on claims made by a Daily Mail journalist, whose text messages with Blake Lively's publicist were used as major evidence in Justin Baldoni's $400 million defamation lawsuit against Lively's team.
In a video clip uploaded on his official X (formerly Twitter) handle on June 8, 2025, Peter shared his thoughts.
"Did Blake Lively's publicist, Leslie Sloane, just bully a reporter into perjury?" Zack Peter said.
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For the unversed, as per a Vulture article, Lively filed an 80-page lawsuit against her It Ends With Us co-star and director, Justin Baldoni, on December 20, 2024, for sexual assault and plotting a smear campaign to destroy her reputation. On January 16, 2025, Baldoni filed a $400 million counter-lawsuit against Lively, her husband, Ryan Reynolds, and her publicist, Leslie Sloane (founder of Vision PR), for defamation and civil extortion.
In Baldoni's lawsuit, text exchanges between Daily Mail journalist James Vituscka and publicist Leslie Sloane were present, in which Sloane allegedly claimed that "Blake was sexually assaulted."
According to a People Magazine report, Baldoni's complaint mentioned that Sloane made the situation worse by spreading a "false narrative" and telling the reporter that Lively was sexually assaulted, which according to them was "an unsubstantiated accusation that not even Lively had gone so far as to claim, designed to destroy Baldoni and his reputation."
However, on June 5, 2025, Vituscka, in a signed declaration, claimed that Lively's publicist "never" told him that the actress or anyone else was "sexually harassed or sexually assaulted" by Baldoni. He also claimed that he did not permit his private messages to be used as evidence in Baldoni's lawsuit.
"In those text messages, my use of the phrase 'sexually assaulted' was a mistake. ... I regret this error. This phrase was not in reference to any conversation that I had with Leslie Sloane," Vituscka added.
Reacting to Vituscka's claims, American podcaster and comedian Zack Peter said that the alleged text messages between the Daily Mail journalist and Sloane tell a "different story," suggesting that Vituscka is working for both teams, in an attempt to get a "scoop."
Leslie Sloane asked to be dismissed from Justin Baldoni's lawsuit
On February 20, 2025, Leslie Sloane's attorney, Sigrid McCawley, filed a motion to dismiss Sloane and her company, Vision PR, from Justin Baldoni's lawsuit. Sloane's team claimed that they were being "dragged" into the legal battle between Baldoni and Blake Lively as a "smoke and mirrors exercise to distract" from Lively's accusations against Baldoni, according to People Magazine.
"As our motion to dismiss makes clear, Leslie Sloane and her company Vision PR were dragged into this lawsuit in an attempt to distract from serious allegations of sexual harassment and systematic retaliation," McCawley said.
She further continued about how Justin Baldoni's team was trying to silence Lively.
"When Ms. Lively bravely spoke up about Baldoni’s predatory behavior, he and his team used every weapon in their arsenal to blame, embarrass and silence her, going so far as to hire a crisis PR manager who promised to 'bury' Ms. Lively and 'destroy' her life," she added.
Subsequently, on March 6, Justin Baldoni's team responded to Sloane's motion, claiming that Sloane and Vision PR played an "active and integral" role in a "conspiracy" to cause damage to the Wayfarer Parties.
They further claimed that in an attempt to protect Blake Lively and "escape her wrath", Sloane's team conspired with her, Ryan Reynolds, and The New York Times Company "to make scapegoats of the Wayfarer Parties for Lively’s woes."
"On information and belief, the Sloane Parties worked for months to drop breadcrumbs and hints of sinister allegations to the public while secretly feeding defamatory falsehoods to any reporter who would listen....," Justin Baldoni's team added.
The trial is scheduled for March 2026, following the ongoing legal conflict between Justin Baldoni and Blake Lively.
