Scooter Braun’s Name Surfaces in Hollywood Smear Operation

A court filing alleges Scooter Braun’s involvement with the entertainment industry’s clandestine smear-site operation, The Hollywood Reporter reveals.

The entertainment industry’s emerging smear-site scandal has been heating up since The Hollywood Reporter first exposed it in February. Now, the outlet has revealed a new court filing that appears to tie Scooter Braun more closely to the operation.

Publicist Stephanie Jones and actress Alexa Nikolas, the latter having been a target of one of these smear campaigns, filed separate lawsuits contending that they’ve uncovered numerous digital campaigns of similar caliber.

These campaigns allege (without substantiation) that entertainment figures like Nikolas engaged in illicit activities, including prostitution, embezzlement, drug dealing, extortion, and human trafficking.

Now, Nikolas’ updated complaint claims that her name is linked through online search engine optimization infrastructure to financier Peter Comisar, a former legal adversary of music executive Scooter Braun. Notably, Comisar was previously caught up in a $200 million legal battle over a private equity fund with Braun and music manager David Bolno, which became public in 2021.

“This overlap […] appears to evidence common strategies being used against Ms. Nikolas and Mr. Comisar,” Nikolas’ attorney writes.

In Comisar’s suit against Braun and Bolno, the financier alleged that “Bolno stated Braun would trash Comisar’s pristine reputation,” and that Braun “alluded to a smear campaign” that he “would unleash.” To that end, several websites and social media accounts have allegedly appeared that raise questions about Comisar’s history, both personal and professional.

But THR points out that Comisar is not the first opponent of Braun’s whose name has appeared on a so-called smear site. According to Jones’ lawsuit, an anonymous site targeting K-pop executive Min Hee-jin is linked to other targets. The former CEO of Hybe subsidiary Ador, Min has been publicly engaged in legal battles of her own with Hybe; Braun is the former CEO and a current board member of Hybe America.

On Instagram earlier this year, Min wrote that she had met with a lawyer “who’s currently handling lawsuits in the U.S. to uncover what TAG PR has really been up to.” Now, THR asserts that the recent updates to Jones’ and Nikolas’ lawsuits imply her line of thinking.

Hybe America took a controlling interest in TAG PR while Braun was the company’s CEO and divested it last year. This is also the same year that Bolno, who is a close friend and business associate of Braun, as well as Hybe America’s former COO, established an LLC with online fixer Jed Wallace. Wallace is allegedly one of the key figures orchestrating the smear campaigns, according to Jones’ lawsuit.