Jeff Bezos' Damning Medium Post Pulls Back the Curtain on Something Much Larger

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

The Amazon CEO’s dick-pic-blackmail story about the ‘National Enquirer’ might, in the end, involve President Trump

On Thursday night, Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, wrote a blog post accusing American Media Inc., of blackmail and extortion. Last month, the National Enquirer (owned by AMI) published a sprawling expose of Bezos’ affair with Lauren Sanchez, including salacious text messages, which ultimately led to the billionaire’s high-profile divorce. Bezos began to investigate how the Enquirer was able to obtain the text messages. The tabloid didn’t like this very much and, according to Bezos, threatened to release sensitive images, including nude photos of Bezos, unless he called off the investigation. Rather than capitulate, Bezos published over 2,000 words exposing the ploy Thursday night, heightening intrigue around AMI’s below-board tactics and CEO David Pecker’s relationship with President Trump.

Link to tweet

Bezos’ post is a bold, remarkably candid account of his entanglement with AMI. After the Enquirer published its investigation last month, Bezos told his longtime personal security expert, Gavin de Becker, to look into how AMI was able to obtain his text messages. Bezos writes that he was informed by AMI that Pecker was “apoplectic” that de Becker was on the case. A few days later, Bezos says he and his lawyers were told by AMI that if de Becker didn’t stand down, the Enquirer would publish a trove of private photos they obtained, including a “below-the-belt selfie” of Bezos. AMI then put the threat in writing, which Bezos published in full. “It would give no editor pleasure to send this email. I hope common sense can prevail — and quickly,” wrote AMI’s chief content officer, Dylan Howard.

Another email followed, laying out the exact terms to which AMI was hoping Bezos would agree. These terms involved Bezos and de Becker stating publicly that they “have no knowledge or basis for suggesting that AMI’s coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces.”

The political angle to which AMI is referring derives from Pecker’s decades-long relationship with Trump. AMI reportedly employs a “catch and kill” practice in which the company purchases the rights to an unsavory story, and Pecker allegedly has a literal safe filled with potentially damaging Trump tales. The most notable story is that of the president’s alleged affair with former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal. In December 2018, the Southern District of New York revealed in the sentencing memo for Trump’s former lawyer-fixer Michael Cohen that AMI purchased the story specifically to keep it from hurting Trump’s presidential chances. AMI admitted as much as part of a non-prosecution agreement, an agreement that also stipulated that AMI not commit additional crimes. The blackmail and extortion detailed by Bezos would certainly be of interest to federal investigators and thus could put AMI in a mess of legal jeopardy, which means Pecker really, really, really didn’t want Bezos to find out how they came across his text messages.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/jeff-bezos-enquirer-791863/

[BruceWane]

1. Consider Bezos's tech security

I highly doubt Bezos has any security vulnerabilities that would be exploitable by any hacker, even the ones at the top of the game. Unlike other famous cases, I'm very sure his password was not "password", ya know? And I'm sure this aspect was checked out thoroughly by de Becker.

At this point, the pool of possible players in this game reduces rapidly to government spooks. I would bet that Bezos's communications were collected by the NSA "incidentally", as they coyly tend to put it. And someone with access then provided it to the WH to use as a nuclear weapon against the owner of the Washington Post.

There's lots of things I don't like about some of Amazon's business practices, but I absolutely applaud Jeff Bezos for having the integrity to place defending the free press above his own considerable personal pain.