Zac Brown’s Ex-Wife Fires Back After He Files for Restraining Order: ‘I Will Not Be Silenced’
Zac Brown's ex-wife, Kelly Yazdi, is not backing down after the country star went to court seeking a restraining order requiring her to remove social media posts that he alleges are defamatory and violate an agreement. In a new response online, Yazdi says she "will not be silenced" despite Brown using his "vast resources" to shut her down.
"No one — not even Zac Brown with all of his money, power, celebrity, and lawyers – may silence my right to freely express myself through art or, although I have to date declined to do so publicly, to speak about the circumstances of our pending divorce," Yazdi writes to accompany a video she posted to Instagram on Monday (May 20).
People previously reported that Brown filed for a temporary restraining order against Yazdi in Georgia on Friday (May 17). The Zac Brown Band frontman sought to force his ex-wife to remove Instagram posts, including one from May 4 that appears to reference their marriage indirectly, accusing an unnamed man of a pattern of "narcissistic abuse."
- Brown and Yazdi married in August of 2023.
- The couple announced their separation just months later in December, telling TMZ, "We are in the process of divorce. Our mutual respect for one another remains. We wish each other the best and will always appreciate our time together. As we navigate this personal matter, we simply request privacy during this time.”
- Brown accuses Yazdi of violating a confidentiality agreement with her posts that dates back to 2022, when she worked for his organization.
"After much deliberation, I took the steps necessary to enforce an agreement between us to maintain personal and business affairs in confidence and to protect my family from online harassment and speculation," Brown says in a statement to People. "My only hope is for us to keep private matters private and to move forward with the mutual respect we had agreed to show one another when we parted ways."
Yazdi hits back at that specifically in her new post, writing:
It is beyond ironic that Zac’s first act after filing an unnecessary public divorce lawsuit was to release a music video that deliberately mocked our wedding party from only a few months before — including a false and defamatory caricature obviously intended to be me and hurt me – followed by a second unnecessary and legally meritless public lawsuit and press release, yet he now claims his “only hope” is that we show each other “mutual respect” by keeping “private matters private” as we negotiate the terms of our divorce.
Yazdi appears to be referencing Zac Brown Band's "Beautiful Drug" video:
"But it is clearly Zac, not me, who has strategically chosen to drag our difficult divorce negotiations into the public eye with these tactics in an effort to portray himself as a victim and to use his vast resources to silence me from telling the truth about our marriage," she adds. "It will not work, and I will not be silenced by him no matter how ridiculous his tactics."
Yazdi finishes her post by saying she intends to "tell my truth in court — where he has unnecessarily dragged me."
Entertainment Tonight reported on Saturday (May 18) that Brown's restraining order had been granted. Yazdi's post from May 4 remained online as of publication time.
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