{"id":598247,"date":"2026-04-21T20:43:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T20:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/598247\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T20:43:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T20:43:08","slug":"scooter-braun-tied-to-hollywood-smear-saga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/598247\/","title":{"rendered":"Scooter Braun Tied to Hollywood Smear Saga"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tA new court filing appears to tie Scooter Braun<\/a> more tightly to the entertainment industry\u2019s emerging smear-site saga. The Hollywood Reporter first exposed the clandestine operation<\/a> in February.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe scandal initially surfaced via a lawsuit connected to Blake Lively<\/a> and Justin Baldoni<\/a>\u2019s It Ends with Us legal war, which is slated for trial in May. Brought by publicist Stephanie Jones, the suit alleged a \u201ccottage industry\u201d of defamatory anonymous websites operating from a shared playbook orchestrated by Baldoni\u2019s crisis publicist Melissa Nathan and online fixer Jed Wallace. A second suit filed in February by actress-turned-activist Alexa Nikolas, a target of one of these smear sites, also named Baldoni\u2019s lawyer Bryan Freedman<\/a> as a defendant.<\/p>\n

\n\tJones and Nikolas contend they\u2019ve uncovered digital campaigns of discreditation, in which perpetrators destroyed reputations by alleging, without substantiation, that adversaries engaged in \u2014 among other activities \u2014 prostitution, embezzlement, drug dealing, extortion and human trafficking. These efforts apparently relied on a mix of sock-puppet accounts across social media platforms, which promoted the spurious claims of vilifying websites. In response to Jones\u2019 litigation, Freedman has previously denied to THR that he and his associates have been involved in the activity and termed the allegations \u201cspeculation presented as fact.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tNow, in an updated complaint, Nikolas asserts that her name is linked, through the internet\u2019s hidden SEO infrastructure, to the financier Peter Comisar, a former legal adversary of Braun. Comisar was previously embroiled in a $200 million dispute over a private equity fund with Braun and top music manager David Bolno that became public in 2021. \u201cThis overlap \u2026 appears to evidence common strategies being used against Ms. Nikolas and Mr. Comisar,\u201d her attorney writes.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn his suit against the two music executives, Comisar alleged that \u201cBolno stated that Braun would trash Comisar\u2019s pristine reputation,\u201d and that Braun \u201calluded to a smear campaign that [he] would unleash.\u201d Several websites and social media accounts have materialized raising questions about Comisar\u2019s personal and professional history.<\/p>\n

\n\tBraun made his name shepherding the careers of Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande and Demi Lovato before evolving into a mogul with ownership stakes in a portfolio of entertainment assets later acquired by South Korean giant Hybe in 2021. Following the sale, he served for a time as CEO of its American subsidiary.<\/p>\n

\n\tA veteran investment banker, Comisar previously held senior roles at Goldman Sachs and Guggenheim Securities before founding Story3, a Los Angeles\u2013based private equity firm focused on consumer brands including Land\u2019s End and Sur La Table. He is also a director and significant minority shareholder of Rent the Runway.<\/p>\n

\n\tNone of the named parties responded to THR\u2019s requests for comment.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJed Wallace, Melissa Nathan and Bryan Freedman<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tIllustration by Christopher Hughes<\/p>\n

\n\tComisar is not the first Braun adversary to appear in one of the smear sites. Jones\u2019 suit also revealed that an anonymous site targeting prominent K-pop executive Min Hee-jin is linked to other apparent targets. Min, the former CEO of Hybe subsidiary ADOR and a Svengali-like figure behind groups such as Girls\u2019 Generation and NewJeans, has been engaged in her own legal fight with Braun\u2019s Hybe.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a January Instagram post, she wrote that she had met with a lawyer \u201cwho\u2019s currently handling lawsuits in the U.S. to uncover what [Nathan\u2019s firm] TAG PR has really been up to,\u201d adding, \u201cPieces are starting to come together.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tMin didn\u2019t detail these pieces. But available information points to her possible thinking.<\/p>\n

\n\tHybe\u2019s American subsidiary took a controlling interest in TAG PR while Braun served as the entertainment firm\u2019s CEO. The company divested of it in 2025, the same year Bolno \u2014 a close friend and business associate of Braun, who previously served as Hybe America\u2019s COO \u2014 established a limited liability company in partnership with Wallace, according to California state business filings. Meanwhile, in a deposition, Jones has detailed how Nathan purportedly did crisis work for Bolno after, in 2023, a singer died<\/a> of a fatal overdose in the married executive\u2019s Miami hotel suite. (Bolno has called the death a \u201cterrible tragedy\u201d but denied responsibility for it.)<\/p>\n

\n\tHybe did not respond to THR\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n

\n\tLively\u2019s attorney Sigrid McCawley on Apr. 2 framed her client\u2019s case around the issue of reprisal and its consequences. \u201cFor 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,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new court filing appears to tie Scooter Braun more tightly to the entertainment industry\u2019s emerging smear-site saga.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":598248,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[8678,44291,236,88,8680,6111],"class_list":{"0":"post-598247","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-blake-lively","9":"tag-bryan-freedman","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-justin-baldoni","13":"tag-scooter-braun"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/598248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}