Publicist Leslie Sloane’s attorney wrote in the filing that Blake Lively “bravely spoke up about Baldoni’s predatory behavior”

Blake Lively on Feb. 13, 2024. Photo: Taylor Hill/WireImage

Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds’ publicist Leslie Sloane is asking to be removed from the $400 million lawsuit Justin Baldoni filed in January.

Attorney Sigrid McCawley filed a motion to dismiss in New York federal court on Thursday, Feb. 20, asking the court to remove her clients Sloane and Sloane’s firm Vision PR from Baldoni and Wayfarer’s countersuit and cover their legal fees.

They were “dragged” into the legal battle as a “smoke and mirrors exercise to distract from” Lively’s accusations of sexual harassment and retaliation, the filing alleges, arguing there’s no “basis” for accusing Sloane of planting “malicious stories” or launching a “smear campaign.”

About the extortion claims, Sloane’s attorneys say Baldoni’s lawyers don’t “identify where or how the alleged extortion occurred” or how she “received anything of value because of that extortion.”

Elsewhere in the filing, Sloane’s lawyers defend Lively, 37, against Baldoni’s framing of the case as a creative struggle to take over It Ends With Us.

“Baldoni’s allegations about the creative issues are irrelevant and tellingly sexist. Because Ms. Lively — an executive producer on the film — dared to offer input on the script, wardrobe and editing, Baldoni blasts her as ‘tyrannical’ and ‘aggressive,’ among other coded terms.”

Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds; Justin Baldoni.

Theo Wargo/WireImage; Araya Doheny/Variety via Getty

They add, “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.”

Attorney’s for Baldoni did not respond to PEOPLE’s requests for comment.

This week, Lively filed her amended complaint, updating her December lawsuit against Baldoni, producer Jamey Heath, Wayfarer Studios, its co-founder Steve Sarowitz, Baldoni’s publicist Jennifer Abel, crisis publicist Melissa Nathan and her company The Agency Group PR, plus Jed Wallace and his crisis management firm Street Relations, Inc.

The actress accused them of sexual harassment and retaliation, alleging they orchestrated an online smear campaign to ruin her reputation after she reported misconduct. Her amended complaint alleged that Baldoni, 41, made two other unnamed female costars “uncomfortable” and they are willing to testify against him. (The trial is scheduled for March 2026.)

Blake Lively on Aug. 8, 2024.Jeff Spicer/Getty

Baldoni’s lawyers have called Lively’s claims “false, outrageous and intentionally salacious with an intent to publicly hurt.” In addition to Sloane and her firm, they’re countersuing Lively, her husband Ryan Reynolds and The New York Times, alleging defamation and extortion. Lively’s lawyers previously called the lawsuit “desperate” and “meritless.”

In Baldoni’s amended complaint — which his team published to the masses on their own website — his attorneys claimed he was targeted in an “actual smear campaign [that] was orchestrated by Sloane, at Lively’s direction.”

They further wrote that Sloane, whose other high-profile clients include Lindsay Lohan, Katie Holmes and Chris Rock, is a “master practitioner of the dark arts of public relations” and led an “intricately planned character assassination plot.” In one alleged text message exhibited in Baldoni’s complaint, Sloane wrote, “I am not paid to take people down. I’m honest.”