HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Jessica Simpson is fighting back after an article in OK! magazine claimed she was dumped by current boyfriend Tony Romo.
The singer’s legal team fired off a heated letter to OK!, demanding a retraction to an article that claimed the Dallas Cowboys quarterback ended the relationship after his team’s playoff loss because Simpson was high-maintenance.
The letter referred to the article as a “smear campaign.”
“That rag completely fabricated and made up this story,” Simpson’s rep, Cindi Berger, said in a statement to E! News. “I’ve spoken to both Jess and Tony and they are completely secure in their relationship and won’t let this garbage get under their skin!”
The article in question appears in OK!‘s Feb. 4 issue, headlined “Jessica Dumped!”
In addition to the break-up claims, the story also states that Ashlee Simpson has attempted to “distance herself” from her older sister, another “scurrilous” attack Simpson’s reps are eager to deny.
Calling the article a “defamatory and grossly mean-spirited” example of a “personal attack masquerading as journalism,” attorney John J. Rosenberg insists that the magazine publish a “prominent and unambiguous retraction…and that it cease and desist from publishing any further false and misleading attacks on Ms. Simpson or her family,” according to the letter originally obtained by TMZ.
Warning that its “effort to damage Ms. Simpson’s romantic and familial relationships and erode her public standing” could warrant a defamation lawsuit, Rosenberg accuses OK! of “couching its stories” with regards to speculative gossip, “spread by supposed, albeit unnamed, ‘sources’ who…obviously lack sufficient confidence in their accusations to risk public attribution.”
