Britney Spears and Kevin Federline have hit back at a new Daily Mail report that suggests the pop star uses meth.
On Saturday, the outlet published a report that allegedly quoted Federline sharing concerns about the singer’s health. “I fear she’s on meth—I’ve been praying someone would make it public and that she wakes up,” he allegedly told reporter Daphne Barak. “It’s terrifying. She is the mother of my boys.”
Federline, who was married to Spears from 2004 to 2007, slammed the report on his Instagram Story yesterday, calling it “repulsive” and “click bait.” He also criticized Barak’s mention of his and Spears’s two sons, 17-year-old Sean Preston and 16-year-old Jayden James.
Though he admitted that he and his family have spoken to reporters Barak and Gunasti “a few times,” Federline said “this was done in a respectful way with love & compassion for Britney and the Spears family. The lies and attempts to exploit minors as click bait is another repulsive example of where, unfortunately, certain journalism is today.”
Spears addressed the report in a new Instagram post, in which she expressed her disappointment over her ex-husband and children speaking with journalists about her.
“The fact that people are claiming things that are not true is so sad … This may not even be them saying such things because it doesn’t make any sense to me for them to be saying that,” she wrote. “It makes me sad because I tried so hard to make things nice for you and it was never good enough. So you guys go behind my back and talk about me … it breaks my heart and the news is so low.”
She added,“Why am I told I have to sit back and rise above ??? When they all go so low ??? Hopefully it is just the news being hateful and Kevin nor Preston said any of those things either way I will be fine working out to Throb !!!”
People reports that Spears’s attorney, Mathew Rosengart, sent a legal letter to the Daily Mail on Sunday.
“The Daily Mail, through Daphne Barak, posted a story yesterday containing numerous false and defamatory fabrications concerning my client Britney Spears that are attributed to Kevin Federline and his children, in particular regarding ‘crystal meth,’” the letter says, per People. “I have separately learnt that on several occasions, Ms. Barak sought to contact Britney under false pretenses, again her minor children, which is exploitative, harassing, and outrageous.”
Rosengart adds that the Daily Mail did not contact Spears’s representatives before publishing the report, “further demonstrating actual malice and reckless disregard for the truth.”
The letter asks the publisher to “please confirm” that it would “immediately delete and retract that false and defamatory story and conduct an internal investigation regarding this matter and the abuse of Britney and her children.”
