- Jeff Bezos claims a lawyer for the National Enquirer emailed his counsel with a threat to post sexual pictures he had sent via text to his girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez, including a so called "dick pic."
Bezos claims that AMI asked him to "make the specific false public statement to the press that we 'have no knowledge or basis for suggesting that AMI's coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces.'"
AMI is the publisher of the National Enquirer, the tabloid that broke the news about Bezos' relationship with Lauren Sanchez.
The blog post by Bezos is also worth reading.
Facts, hearsay and conjecture: FACT: The Senate's 120-day deadline for the Trump administration to reach a conclusion about the killing of Jamal Khashoggi is today. FACT: The Washington Post has driven coverage of the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, which is unsurprising, considering they gave him a byline. FACT: Muhammed bin Salman has been threatening to kill Khashoggi for years. FACT: The Washington Post is reporting that Bezos' team thinks the leaks are "politically motivated". FACT: Gavin de Becker, Jeff Bezos' investigation head, has literally written textbooks on extortion and how to deal with it. FACT: The National Enquirer put out a 100-page glossy magazine celebrating Saudi Arabia in March. FACT: Saudi interests and National Enquirer interests were assembled by the Trump administration. FACT: The Saudis bought phone hacking software from the Israelis in 2017. Conjecture: Pretend you're David Pecker. You know - beyond a reasonable doubt - that MBS will happily kill American journalists. Yeah - you've signed a plea deal with the Mueller investigation but... bone saws. What's your out on this one? I'm thinkin' I'n'I are committing some extortion to writing and getting the hell out from in between an irresistible force and an immovable object. Added fun: Apparently the Enquirer runs on AWS.
I guess I'm supposed to be worked up by this, but I have a hard time caring about a bunch of rich people trying to eat each other.
Setting aside that multiple wrongs don't cancel each other out to make things right, what's worth being concerned about is that if this is something they're comfortable doing with Jeff Bezos, it's easy to conceive that they also do it to people with much less clout. https://theweek.com/speedreads/822652/ronan-farrow-says-national-enquirer-tried-blackmail
Yeah that's certainly fair. At the time, I was only aware of Bezos' allegations, and frankly was questioning whether we were getting the whole story. I knew catch and kill was a thing, but outright blackmail is a whole 'nother kettle of fish. I'm also amazed that their lawyer would be willing to do this, given that it seems pretty clear grounds to be disbarred.