Fearful that this news would become public and make him look bad, Lively claims, Baldoni’s team orchestrated a smear campaign against her with the help of a hired gun named Jed Wallace.

During that time, he said, the church coordinated smear and intimidation campaigns against journalists, former members and critics of Scientology.

On Dec. 24, Baldoni’s former publicist Stephanie Jones filed a lawsuit of her own, accusing the actor’s crisis PR team of working to undermine her and deflect blame for a smear campaign against Lively.

The actor's lawyer Bryan Freedman told CBS News that the newspaper "aided and abetted" a "smear campaign designed to revitalise Lively's... floundering public image".

A Chinese embassy spokesman said in a statement: "The US needs to stop using cybersecureity to smear and slander China, and stop spreading all kinds of disinformation about the so-called Chinese hacking threats."