Cipriani clash led to Jon Fine’s AMI role

A stormy encounter at Cipriani led to former Amazon lawyer Jon Fine being thrust into a top role at American Media Inc. just as its National Enquirer magazine was investigating his former boss and friend, Jeff Bezos, The Post has learned.

After working at Amazon for nine years, Fine was hired as the No. 2 counsel at American Media late last year — only to find himself taking on a bigger role shortly after his hire when his then-boss, Cameron Stracher, was unceremoniously terminated.

As The Post exclusively reported last year, Stracher cleared out his desk on Nov. 7 after a clash with AMI CEO David Pecker at Cipriani Wall Street.

Stracher thought he was meeting Pecker for a possible promotion — only to be blindsided by the emotional encounter, sources said.

Friends say he wonders if the clash was an orchestrated move by Pecker to dump him in order to bring Fine into his inner circle just as the Bezos investigation was heating up.

Restaurant sources said that Pecker’s expletive-laced tirade at Cipriani Wall Street mentioned “a source” and “payments,” but no specific names were heard.

Fine was thrust onto the world stage last week as the AMI lawyer who laid down the conditions by which the tabloid owner would squash publication of racy photos it had obtained between married billionaire Bezos and his lover, Lauren Sanchez.

The shady deal came to light after Bezos released the e-mails he got from Fine and AMI Chief Content Officer Dylan Howard in a shocking blog post that accused AMI of extortion and blackmail.

Bezos’ blog post says that AMI agreed to hold off on publishing the photos — including Sanchez “smoking a cigar in what appears to be a simulated oral sex scene — if Bezos would issue a statement denying that AMI’s coverage of him was “politically motivated.”

Fine finds himself in a top role as the US Attorneys office looks into whether the alleged blackmail attempt could void a nonprosecution agreement that AMI signed when it agreed to cooperate with the feds in its probe of Michael Cohen, President Trump’s then personal attorney and “fixer.”

AMI acknowledged it paid $150,000 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who claims she had an affair with Trump, in violation of campaign finance rules.

Stracher was instrumental in building a First Amendment argument around the $150,000 payment to McDougal for the “catch and kill” story that it bought but never ran.

Elkan Abramowitz, the personal attorney for the embattled Pecker, went on ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” on Sunday to try to put out the firestorm.

Abramowitz said AMI had not engaged in criminal behavior and said the source for the Bezos affair that triggered last month’s Na- tional Enquirer exclusive was someone who Bezos and Sanchez had known for years and who the Enquirer had used before.

Speculation was that it was Michael Sanchez, brother of Lauren — but Abramowitz dropped no further clues.

Fine left Amazon in January 2015. His LinkedIn page describes his work at Amazon from November 2008 to January 2015 as director, author and publisher relations. After that, he worked for Open Road Integrated Media and for his own firm for the past year.

Stracher was said to be in Europe and not reachable for comment, and Fine did not return an e-mail sent via LinkedIn.

Little noticed in the blizzard of political news swirling around American Media is a reorganization quietly hatched late last year that reflagged it as American Media LLC.

The reorganization means celebrity magazine People, a rival to many of the American Media celebrity titles, will now have to rely on American Media’s sister company to help it get attention and placement on the same newsstands where it competes with American Media.

Under the reorganization, American Media is no longer an independent company but a wholly owned subsidiary of a brand new company called Worldwide Media Services Inc., controlled by the hedge fund Chatham Asset Management, and its secretive boss, Anthony Melchiorre.

Just last year, Melchiorre had snapped up from Canadian billionaire Jim Pattison a massive wholesale distribution comppany that gets magazines from warehouses to retail racks across the US.

That company, which was reflagged as American News Co., is also now a subsidiary of Worldwide Media Services. Uniting American Media — owner of the National Enquirer, US Weekly, OK!, In Touch and other magazines — with the wholesale distributor is sure to create unease among other publishers that use the same wholesale distribution company, including People, sources said.