Attorney representing Justin Baldoni publicly criticizes publicist Stephanie Jones, prompting response from her legal team

Justin Baldoni is ramping up his legal war with publicist Stephanie Jones … the woman his lawyer blames for triggering the whole Baldoni and Blake Lively drama.

Justin’s attorney, Bryan Freedman, just filed an amended set of counterclaims against Stephanie … pushing back legally after Jones’ lawyers went on “Extra” to talk to Billy Bush about her side of the dueling lawsuits.

Freedman also blasted Jones in a statement, telling us … “In light of new evidence being uncovered almost daily, it has become imperative to amend our counterclaims against Stephanie Jones and Jonesworks. We are not surprised at all that Ms. Jones would instruct her legal team to go on record and mischaracterize the circumstances surrounding the sham “subpoena” and Vanzan lawsuit, so impressively uncovered by the passionate group of online sleuths.”

Justin’s lawyer continues … “A cursory reading of the ‘Van-sham’ lawsuit makes clear that the Lively Parties have been caught engaging in their own smear campaign, intentionally circumventing the normal procedures for clearly improper purposes by creating a farcical complaint with an unrelated plaintiff and no named defendants, ensuring that no one would know about or object to their attempt to obtain information they were not entitled to.”

Freedman adds … “To suggest — as Vanzan (Lively and Reynolds) do in their secret ”complaint’ — that they are unaware of the identities of their own employees and contractual counterparties is a complete joke. We are just starting to scratch the surface of a much broader and more insidious scheme.”

To be clear, Jones and Jonesworks are equally implicated in this misconduct. We reiterate once again that there is not and has never been a smear campaign, except for the one being waged by the Lively Parties and Ms. Jones in collaboration with the New York Times.”

He concludes … “We will continue the fight to expose and hold accountable the wrongdoers and uncover the truth.”

Meanwhile, Stephanie’s attorney Maaren Shah tells … “This case will be decided on the mountain of evidence that demonstrates Wayfarer Studios and Ms. Abel deliberately breached their contracts with Jonesworks, which the defendants have conspicuously failed to rebut.”

She continued … “The defendants’ weak attempt to assemble their own case against Ms. Jones amounts to nothing more than a few debunked conspiracy theories and media gimmicks that have no basis in fact or evidence. The indisputable fact remains: the defendants have yet to provide any substantive defense to Ms. Jones’s case. Everything else is just distraction and noise.”