In 1969, the chaos theory founder Edward Lorenz articulated the Butterfly Effect, in which a single, small action in one area can lead to broader, unexpected outcomes in others. The phenomenon, based on his research into weather patterns, is a helpful metaphor for a storm now gathering force in Hollywood.

When Blake Lively and her co-star and director Justin Baldoni first clashed on the New Jersey set of their hit romantic weepie It Ends with Us, they no doubt didn’t realize their careers would both be overwhelmed by the maelstrom. Nor that years on, and millions of dollars in legal fees later, the dispute would remain constant public fodder, heading to a May jury trial in a Manhattan federal courtroom.

But what’s most surprising is what’s taking place downwind — thanks to their mutual animosity and assets. The personality-driven spectacle has uncovered a clandestine smear machine. Its workings span industries and continents, playing an extrajudicial role in recent high-profile conflicts involving Rebel Wilson, Scooter Braun, the wellness guru Andrew Huberman and other bold-faced names both within and beyond entertainment. The Hollywood Reporter has been connecting the dots and surfacing the claims over the past three months.

The revelations began to appear in court this past December, when Baldoni’s ex-publicist Stephanie Jones filed a lawsuit against him, his production company Wayfarer and his crisis communications specialist Melissa Nathan. Jones’ legal team had hired a digital forensics firm to examine a vilifying anonymous website made about her and discovered that it allegedly was the handiwork of Nathan as well as a fixer named Jed Wallace, who’s had a long association with Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman.

Jones’ forensics firm also found, according to her lawsuit, that her website was connected to “a growing list of attack websites from the same band of conspirators.” The sites mix factual assertions about their targets with unsubstantiated conspiracies and defamatory claims of misconduct ranging from extortion and embezzlement to drug dealing and prostitution. Jones’ attorneys say Nathan and Wallace have run “a clandestine cottage industry of creating false smear websites and social media accounts targeting their adversaries and those of their clients,” often in connection with litigation. Her legal team describes what it’s uncovered as a “playbook.” Freedman has denied that Nathan and Wallace are responsible for the sites, which have since gone offline, and objected to Jones’ forensic data, deriding it as “speculation presented as fact.”

The sites — THR was able to review them via the Internet Archive — are strikingly rinky-dink. This is likely not by accident. Professional hit jobs, they position themselves as the handmade, lo-fi work of amateurs, typically self-styled whistleblowers speaking their truths to power. The sites are amplified by online bots. The apparent goal is to discredit accusers in public — then circulate the smears to their social circles — as well as demoralize adversaries amid legal disputes, forcing quiet settlements on preferred terms.

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The key players and their antagonists in this saga exist at the center of the entertainment industry’s attorney-publicity matrix. Freedman has become one of the most well-known lawyers in entertainment for his over-the-top aggression, hired by everyone from Range’s founding CAA defectors to Megyn Kelly, who has recommended him to THR by explaining that “once he’s on board for you, he’ll kill for you.”

Nathan launched her firm The Agency Group (often referred to as TAG PR) — whose clients have included Drake, Logan Paul and The Chainsmokers — along with several of her former colleagues at PR crisis consulting powerhouse Hiltzik Strategies. Until now, Wallace has been the lowest profile of the trio, a mysterious Texas-based operator who’s been compared to the titular troubleshooter in Showtime’s Ray Donovan. Lively’s legal team has claimed in a legal filing that he specializes in “executing confidential and ‘untraceable’ campaigns” against opponents. For his part, his own lawyer describes his business as helping clients “when they find themselves unjustly attacked, extorted, doxed, swatted, scammed or need help navigating through the most frightening situations.”

So far, several celebrities have been tied to the smearing. On Mar. 13, THR published a leaked recording of Wallace instructing Nathan to assert — without evidence — that movie producer Amanda Ghost was a sex trafficker. They were working on behalf of actress-director Rebel Wilson, who’d been feuding with Ghost over their film The Deb.

“We can’t just do, like, oh, she’s a bitch, she sucks,” Wallace says in the recording. “It’s, like, it’s got to be really, really heavy and connected to something that heavy.” He references the involvement of Freedman, who cited unattributed Ghost websites, including their reference to her as the “Indian Ghislaine Maxwell,” in a Sept. 2024 court filing.

Ghost has since filed a defamation suit against Wilson. In a deposition, an employee of Nathan’s characterized such websites as acting “in supplement or aid to ongoing litigation.” Those who’ve been targeted and their allies view the practice as both a pressure tactic in which reputational sabotage is weaponized, as well as a subversion of the legal process itself.

For her part, Wilson has denied any involvement in the sites. But Ghost’s attorney Camille Vasquez has told THR that their side believes Wilson “not only contributed to the malicious sites but that she was the driving force behind them. The evidence we have submitted to the court in California supports that conclusion.”

Early on, the It Ends with Us legal maneuvering ensnared Lively’s friend Taylor Swift, revealing the popstar’s personal texts and, for a time, positioning her as a potential deposition witness. Yet in April her old nemesis, Scooter Braun, was pulled into the wider scandal when a new court filing in a related smear-site case contended one of the music mogul’s business rivals had been anonymously maligned.

Braun’s connection was notable in part because a separate previously identified smear target was the prominent K-Pop executive Min Hee-jin, who had worked at the Korean entertainment firm Hybe when Braun was the CEO of Hybe America. (Another Hybe executive has told THR that the pair had no reason to be at odds and that they did not interact; Braun declined to discuss the allegations with THR.)

Min posted on Instagram in January that she’d met with a lawyer “who’s currently handling lawsuits in the U.S. to uncover what [Nathan’s firm] TAG PR has really been up to,” adding, “Pieces are starting to come together.” Until recently, Nathan was Braun’s longtime publicist.

Another name linked: wellness podcaster Andrew Huberman. New litigation asserts that his former live-in girlfriend was targeted online in similar fashion after she was a key source in a March 2024 New York Magazine investigative cover story about what the publication termed his “mechanisms of control.” Huberman didn’t respond to THR.

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Other targets of the smears initially tied by Jones’ technical analysis range from a billionaire businessman to a financially struggling consumer-goods advocate. Kate Whiteman — who accused the Manhattan high-society brothers Oren and Alon Alexander of sexual assault, leading to their arrest and recent conviction — died after she was maligned on one of these anonymous sites. (The coroner’s office in Australia, where she’s from, wouldn’t provide information about her death, citing consideration for family members.)

Others include the former fintech CEO Christian Lanng, who alleged in a 2024 defamation and extortion action that Freedman and his firm “hired third parties to create deepfake stories” about him “in an attempt to leverage a higher settlement.” (An exhibit Lanng presented featured Freedman’s law partner sharing an update from “our specialist,” left unidentified, about an acquired website and a plan “to troll” Internet forums which discussed Lanng’s company “and maybe come up with a meme about Christian.”) In court, Freedman has denied the allegation, and he’s told THR it “sounds like a spy novel about the CIA.”

Then there’s actress-turned-activist Alexa Nikolas, the former star of Nickelodeon’s Zoey 101 whose own damaging site appeared shortly after she publicized Freedman’s own sexual-assault settlement from decades prior, in which he didn’t admit liability. She had also organized a protest in front of the lawyer’s Century City office. (Freedman had previously represented her ex-husband after she accused him of sexual battery — a suit she later dropped.)

The lawyer was neither pinpointed by Jones’ forensics, nor named in her suit as a defendant. But Nikolas sued Freedman for defamation on Feb. 5, contending he “was an integral part of a team working to control [unfavorable] narratives.” He’s so far remained silent on the matter and has yet to respond in court. Nikolas’ recent assertions have widened the scandal to include Braun and Huberman.

None of this would’ve been possible without Lively and Baldoni, adversaries whose spite and resources compelled them to continue to pursue litigation when just about everyone else in their positions would have quickly settled in the cloaked realm of arbitration.The dark combination of their enmity — and their egos — has led to this rare bright light shone on an otherwise concealed aspect of the entertainment business.

The stars’ fight went nuclear in December 2024, when Nathan’s text to a colleague promising that “we can bury anyone” was trumpeted in an investigation by The New York Times. The following 15 months has revealed the evident scope of that promise.

In an early April pre-trial decision, the judge in the Lively-Baldoni dispute narrowed the case to a focus around reprisal. “For Blake Lively, the greatest measure of justice is that the people and the playbook behind these coordinated digital attacks have been exposed and are already being held accountable,” Lively’s attorney Sigrid McCawley said in a statement afterward.