Blake Lively drops subpoenas against YouTubers in Justin Baldoni case and denies efforts to silence them

Blake Lively is backing off, at least for now. The actress has officially withdrawn the subpoenas her legal team issued to three YouTubers who covered her ongoing legal battle with It Ends With Us director and co-star Justin Baldoni, per Us Weekly. 

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According to court documents filed July 26, Lively, 37, informed the court that she’s no longer seeking information from Kassidy O’Connell, McKenzie Folks, and Lauren Neidigh, small content creators who had publicly pleaded with the judge to intervene. The subpoenas reportedly requested things like credit card and bank account information.

The subpoenas started a discourse online with people slamming Lively, arguing that she's trying to use her wealth to silence people and their right to free speech, and the creators pushed back hard. Earlier this month, they wrote directly to the judge. O’Connell argued, “There is no evidence or sound legal basis whatsoever to have issued this subpoena in the first place.”

“In light of the Third-Parties’ representations made in meet and confers, public statements, and/or information provided in their moving papers, there is no further information required from the Subpoenas as to these specific Third-Parties at this time,” Lively’s legal team wrote in a letter to the judge. “Ms. Lively has therefore withdrawn the Subpoenas as to them.”

The subpoenas issued to Google and X (formerly known as Twitter) were part of what Lively’s lawyers called the “discovery process aimed at gathering information to link [Baldoni] and the other defendants’ activities to sources through YouTube and X content creator accounts.”

Lively, who accused Baldoni of sexual harassment and retaliation in a federal lawsuit earlier this year, alleges that after she raised complaints about his behavior on set, he hired a crisis PR team to discredit her online.

And while the YouTubers named have been released from the subpoenas, Lively’s legal team is still going after others. "Subpoenas are not accusations of wrongdoing. They are tools for gathering admissible evidence in federal court," they told Us Weekly.

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They also spoke up about the silencing conversation. "There is no silencing of content creators; they are obviously making their views known. This is a sexual harassment and retaliation lawsuit against Justin Baldoni and a number of other Wayfarer defendants, and we are simply seeking information to aid in our fact gathering," they explained. 

The case is still set for trial on March 9, 2026, although the scheduled deposition has been delayed.