Jeff Bezos has accused the National Enquirer of issuing blackmail threats consisting of nude pictures of the Amazon CEO. The threat was made following a probe by Bezos into a National Inquirer story that looked at the billionaire’s relationship with TV’s Lauren Sanchez.
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Following the Enquirer’s piece about Bezos and Sanchez, he hired Gavin de Becker to lead an investigation into how private text messages were obtained and to find out the motives of the outlet. What’s interesting is that Bezos believes they could be politically motivated. Bezos accused Pecker of being close to both Donald Trump and the Saudis, two entities that The Washington Post has been critical of.
Neowin
I think it's pretty safe to suggest that Trump ordered investigation into Bezos, because Trump hates Wasihngton Post coverage. He's tweeted nastiness at Bezos in the past. And also not too far in the past:
Well, they CAN.Threats were initially made verbally with an offer by the National Enquirer, which said that it had more texts and photos that they’d publish if the investigation wasn’t stopped. To this, Bezos’ lawyers claimed that the Amazon CEO holds the copyright to the photos so they can’t publish them without permission.
In his blog post, Bezos said these communications confirm AMI’s reputation of abusing journalistic privileges and hiding behind protections, he said:
“These communications cement AMI’s long-earned reputation for weaponizing journalistic privileges, hiding behind important protections, and ignoring the tenets and purpose of true journalism. Of course I don’t want personal photos published, but I also won’t participate in their well-known practice of blackmail, political favors, political attacks, and corruption. I prefer to stand up, roll this log over, and see what crawls out.”
Interesting.In a post on Medium published Thursday afternoon, Bezos discloses he launched his own investigation in to the National Enquirer, which is led by executive David Pecker, to find out how the tabloid was able to obtain Bezos' personal text messages. In response to the investigation, the chief content officer of American Media Inc. (known as AMI) wrote to Bezos’ lawyers, threatening to publish more intimate photos of Bezos and Sanchez.
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Jon Fine, AMI's deputy general counsel who sent one of the e-mails to Bezos' legal team, has only been at the company for four months, according to his LinkedIn. Prior to AMI, he worked at Amazon for nine years in various roles from November 2008 to January 2015.
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Elena Fast, a criminal defense lawyer at Blanch Law firm based in New York City, does not believe the two e-mails themselves legally qualify as blackmail or extortion. "This was clever drafting," Fast says. " [...] There's certainly ... the implication of [threat], but there is nothing explicit enough to rise to the level of criminal wrongdoing, in my opinion."
Forbes
According to Forbes Real-Time Rankings, Bezos ended the day $2 billion poorer. However, he is still the richest man in the world by far, with a net worth that Forbes pegs at $133.5 billion.
AMI was let off the hook by the SDNY in the Cohen campaign finance violation case regarding payments of hush money for Trump in exchange for continued cooperation regarding federal election laws. Apparently, they need to be told explicitly not to blackmail people. Maybe a lawsuit by someone they ARE blackmailing would get that written into the books. Bezos has enough money. Perhaps he should offer to fund any such lawsuit any of them would care to bring.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE:
There is a difference between whether something fits a definition of a crime and whether it is something that could conceivably be prosecuted.
In the Medium post contained in the tweet above, Amazon founder (and Washington Post owner) Jeff Bezos explains how the parent company of the National Enquirer engaged in what Bezos characterizes as "extortion and blackmail" towards him. It is worth reading.
As background, Bezos and his wife recently announced that they are getting divorced. This announcement appears to have something to do with the publication by the National Enquirer of texts and other evidence that Bezos had an affair with another woman.
In the Medium post, Bezos explained that he hired someone to conduct an investigation of the National Enquirer and its parent company. He notes that there are "now several independent investigations looking into this matter," suggesting there are criminal investigations.
To be clear, if the National Enquirer or its parent company caused someone to hack into Bezos' computer, server, or smart phone, that is a crime. (The National Enquirer's parent company claims it did not do so.) The subject of Bezos's post is something that happened after.
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To make this out as an extortion case, prosecutors would have to argue that the claims Bezos had against AMI constituted "money or property" of Bezos and that the whole settlement proposal was merely window dressing for the extortion of Bezos by AMI.
You can make those arguments, but it would be a very hard trial to win. And that's without considering a potential First Amendment defense. AMI would also have an advice of counsel defense, because [terms of a settlement proposal] appear to have been drafted by a lawyer.
So what about the AMI Non Prosecution Agreement with the Southern District of New York federal prosecutors? [...] [I]f this wasn't a crime, it doesn't violate [that] agreement. It does shift things to an extent because prosecutors could claim that this was a crime and use that to void the Non Prosecution Agreement.
AMI would certainly challenge that in court, but the standard would not be the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard that they would be entitled to in a criminal trial. That said, for the reasons above, I don't think federal prosecutors will go down that road. (If they did, they would spend a lot of resources fighting with AMI just to have the right to bring criminal charges against individuals at AMI that they were willing to forego bringing in the first place. Not a good use of prosecutorial resources.)
Still leaves the question: How did AMI get Bezos' texts? Surely there was a crime committed in that.
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