Tab tried to blackmail me: Bezos

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos claims the National Enquirer is blackmailing him.

Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post, wrote in a Medium post Thursday that Enquirer owner AMI has promised to release explicit photos of him unless he backs down from a probe into AMI’s interest in his personal life.

The supermarket tabloid was the first to reveal Bezos’ affair with former Los Angeles TV anchor Lauren Sanchez amid his divorce from wife McKenzie, including sultry texts between the lovebirds. Since then, Bezos has made it his mission to find, including hiring a private investigator.

“Several days ago, an AMI leader advised us that (National Enquirer publisher David Pecker) is ‘apoplectic’ about our investigation,” Bezos wrote on Medium.

A few days later, Bezos said, a rep from AMI approached him and threatened to publish more text messages and photos “if we didn’t stop our investigation.”

AMI was most recently in the news for its immunity deal with the Department of Justice after Pecker admitted to paying $150,000 to a woman, previously identified as former Playboy model Karen McDougal, to buy her silence about an alleged affair with President Trump.

Rather than allow AMI to proceed with its “extortion and blackmail,” Bezos wrote, he instead decided to release the emails “despite the personal cost and embarrassment they threaten.”

“Any personal embarrassment AMI could cause me takes a back seat because there’s a much more important matter involved here,” he wrote. “If in my position I can’t stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can?”

Neither Pecker nor a spokesman for AMI returned a request for comment.