Jeff Bezos accuses tabloid of blackmail
Amazon owner: ‘National Enquirer’ threatened to expose explicit photos
“... I also won’t participate in their well-known practice of blackmail, political favors, political attacks and corruption,” billionaire Jeff Bezos wrote.
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post, accused the nation’s leading supermarket tabloid, the National Enquirer, of blackmail Thursday, laying out an alleged scheme that brought together international intrigue and White House politics to the publication’s exposure of his extramarital affair last month.
It was an unusual move by Bezos, who had largely avoided the spotlight even as he became the world’s richest man, despite the frequent attacks from President Donald Trump, who has labeled his newspaper “The Amazon Post” and recently called him “Jeff Bozo” in a tweet.
The Enquirer pushed the multibil-
lionaire into the headlines with its Jan. 28 edition. The tabloid devoted 11 pages to the story of Bezos’ affair with Lauren Sanchez, a former host of the Fox show So You Think You Can Dance, calling it “the biggest investigation in Enquirer history!”
The Enquirer boasted in the article that it had tracked the couple “across five states and 40,000 miles,” observing them as they boarded private jets, rode in limousines and repaired to “five-star hotel hideaways.” The article also included amorous text messages that Bezos had sent to Sanchez.
The story set off speculation in Washington and New York media circles that the coverage was tied to the Enquirer’s alliance with the White House. The relationship between the tabloid’s owner, American Media Inc., and the president had been frayed by a cooperation deal struck by the Enquirer’s leadership with prosecutors looking into its role during the 2016 campaign, when it helped orchestrate the payment of hush money to women who alleged past affairs with Trump.
After seeing his texts in the tabloid’s pages, Bezos started his own investigation into the tabloid’s motives as the Post prepared an article speculating on its potential political agenda. His tying of the Enquirer’s motive to politics, Bezos alleged in a post on Medium on Thursday, prompted associates of David Pecker, chairman of American Media Inc., to threaten to publish graphic photos it had apparently obtained, as well as more of the steamy text messages.
“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,” Bezos wrote of AMI, explaining why he had decided to speak out. “I prefer to stand up, roll this log over and see what crawls out.”
Bezos said AMI had political reasons for wanting him to stop looking into its decision to publish the article. He pointed to the publisher’s past cooperation with Trump, as well as its connections to the government of Saudi Arabia. The Washington Post has reported on the murder last year of its columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident.
Bezos’ online post details a stunning and bizarre clash between the world’s richest man and the nation’s biggest tabloid publisher. In it, all of the country’s obsessions of recent years appear to have collided, from the personal lives of billionaires and sensational tabloid headlines to Trump’s fight with the media.