Blake Lively hit with $9 million lawsuit from publicist she claimed set ‘digital army’ against her…

Blake Lively is the subject of a new $7 million defamation lawsuit being brought against her by crisis publicist Jed Wallace, who the actor had previously claimed “weaponized a digital army” against her as part of a smear campaign.

Wallace is employed by the Texas-based crisis-management firm Street Relations, Inc.

Last December, Lively filed a bombshell complaint against her It Ends With Us co-star and director Justin Baldoni alleging sexual harassment.

In that filing, her lawyers claimed that Wallace was hired by Baldoni’s PR team to assist in an alleged smear campaign against Lively. It was claimed he “weaponized a digital army around the country from New York to Los Angeles to create, seed and promote content that appeared to be authentic on social media platforms and internet chat forums.”

The following day, the New York Times published an investigation repeating those claims of a smear campaign. In January, Baldoni launched a legal action against the Times disputing those reports. He is also counter-suing Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds, alleging that the couple have sought to destroy his reputation.

In the new lawsuit filed by Wallace, his lawyers claim that Lively’s legal team has “conceded that Lively has no facts supporting the allegations she made against Wallace and Street in the Precursor which ‘made headlines around the world’ as she now, apparently under the threat of sanctions from one of Plaintiffs’ attorneys, sought to ‘investigate the scope of Mr. Wallace’s conduct.’”