Why lie? It makes things so much more complicated. And a PR flack—like absurd socialgay Kristian Laliberte—should know by now how to twist the truth instead of changing it outright. Laliberte's email and Facebook were recently hacked into. "My PR efforts are focused on getting positive press for my clients—-my friends are only mentioned (in a positive light) to news outlets if and when they are involved with events I am working on," he wrote us today, in response to allegations that he leaks information on his frenemies. But Laliberte does leak info—not all positive—about people he knows. And we can tell you that for a fact!

Remember this? The drama surrounding to the run-up to the reality-show announcement, a Hamptons affair that Laliberte is now involved in? After socialite Emily Brill wrote about her "heart to heart" convo with Laliberte, he emailed us:

"I know Emily socially, I have never spent any one on one time with her. Half the time I am not sure what she is saying, she speaks very quietly...I have no idea what Emily is referring to, nor am I involved in any project with her. I would suggest that she employs a fact checker in the future."

One says they had a heart-to-heart, the other says he can't even hear her. Huh.

Laliberte told Blackbook today, regarding Joshua Stein of Page Six Mag saying that he leaked info on his frenemies:

"Believe me, if I wanted to rat my friends out, I know secrets that could destroy their careers, and they know my secrets. All of my friends are people I love and trust. I've had fake friends who I now realize did throw me under the bus, but I have exorcised them from my life. As for Olivia Palermo, I never received the letter in the first place. And I certainly am not going to supply information to a website that caused me to receive death threats. Josh Stein thrives on gossip. Anyone who spends their life writing negatively on other people is not someone whose opinion I value."

They're mutually unimpressed, then. Laliberte also adds that the messages in question could have been "doctored." Sounds familiar—he's accused emails of being "doctored" before, as you'll see here. Email doctoring—it's the new identity theft!
But Laliberte also thrives on gossip: remember the shoving match between him and style.com reporter Derek Blasberg? That was because of this item here, in response to an unbylined style.com article on NYC cliques that a tipster told us Blasberg had written:

"you know that whole style.com piece was written by derek blasberg. and he name drops himself in there too. ugh. why does he never take the heat. its so annoying."

The tip turned out to be completely untrue; the tipster's name was redacted at the time. We're only breaching confidentiality here because he lied to us so boldly: it was, of course, Laliberte.
In Laliberte's own words, from today's email: "As someone very recently told me—there's no such thing as a protected source."

[Blackbook]

[Photo: Emily Brill]