US to investigate Enquirer over Bezos
NEW YORK – Federal prosecutors are looking into the National Enquirer’s handling of a story about Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ extramarital affair to see whether the tabloid’s publisher violated a cooperation agreement with prosecutors, two people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Friday.
Bezos claims the Enquirer’s publisher, American Media Inc., tried to extort and blackmail him. In an extraordinary blog post published Thursday on Medium.com, Bezos said AMI threatened to publish intimate photos of him unless he stopped investigating how the Enquirer obtained his private exchanges with his mistress.
Prosecutors now are looking at whether AMI violated an earlier agreement in which it promised not to break any laws in exchange for avoiding prosecution for campaign finance violations, the people familiar with the matter said. They weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to AP on condition of anonymity.
The high-profile clash has pitted the world’s richest man against the leader of America’s best-known tabloid, who is a strong backer of President Donald Trump. Bezos’ investigators have suggested the Enquirer’s coverage of his affair was driven by dirty politics.
A spokesman for AMI did not immediately return a message seeking comment on the investigation, and the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan declined to comment. Earlier Friday, AMI said it “acted lawfully” while reporting the story and that it engaged in “good faith negotiations” with Bezos.
Bezos did not say the tabloid was seeking money – instead, he said, the Enquirer wanted him to make a public statement that its coverage was not politically motivated.
The company has admitted in the past that it engaged in what’s known as “catch-and-kill” practices to help Trump become president. Trump has been highly critical of Bezos and the The Washington Post’s coverage of the White House. (Bezos owns the Post.)
“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, in explaining his decision to go public. “I prefer to stand up, roll this log over, and see what crawls out.”
The Bezos affair became public when the Enquirer published a Jan. 9 story about his relationship with Lauren Sanchez, a former TV anchor who is also married. Bezos then hired a team of private investigators to find out how the tabloid got the texts and photos the two exchanged.
Bezos’ personal investigators, led by his longtime security consultant, Gavin de Becker, concluded that Bezos’ phone wasn’t hacked. Instead, they’ve been focusing on Sanchez’s brother, according to a person familiar with the matter.
De Becker and his team suspect Michael Sanchez, a talent manager who touts his support of Trump and is an acquaintance of Trump allies Roger Stone and Carter Page, may have provided the information to the Enquirer, the person said. The person wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.