National Enquirer owner says it 'acted lawfully' toward Amazon's Jeff Bezos

[Zorro]

Source: LA Times

National Enquirer owner American Media Inc. pushed back Friday against Amazon.com Inc. chief Jeff Bezos’ accusation that the magazine and its publisher — a confidant of President Trump — had tried to blackmail and extort him.

“American Media believes fervently that it acted lawfully,” the company said in a statement.

The National Enquirer published an expose on Bezos’ relationship with former TV anchor Lauren Sanchez, and Bezos hired investigators to find out if the story was politically motivated. Bezos owns the Washington Post, which has written critical stories of Trump, and Trump counts National Enquirer publisher David Pecker as a close ally.

In a surprising move Thursday, Bezos said the National Enquirer threatened to publish more details and revealing photos if the executive didn’t stop the investigation. His statement online included vivid descriptions of the images.

Read more: https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-jeff-bezos-national-enquirer-20190208-story.html

[Turbineguy]

1. Blackmail is lawful

the Russians swear by it and it's inflation indexed!

[Siwsan]

2. Perhaps under Russian law

[CloudWatcher]

3. What does the DOJ say

Neither the opinions of Trump nor the National Enquirer should be treated as news. What does the DOJ say about criminal investigations of this behavior?

[RockRaven]

4. Quickest internal investigation ever... or at least since Trump first blurted out "No collusion!"

AMI can fervently believe whatever the hell it likes. A dozen jurors are the ones who are really going to decide what happened.

[DirtEdonE]

5. That traitor stone has gotten away with this crap for way too long

Slap a gag order on that bastard and if he defies it slap his ass in jail.

It's way past time.

[Calista241]

6. This could get awfully tricky super quick.

The enquirer is going to claim they’re a journalistic news organization.

Prosecutors are going to have to step carefully to make sure they don’t set a precedent that blows up legitimate news orgs when disagreement about publishing content arise.

Don’t get me wrong, i hope the national enquirer goes down and goes down hard, i just don’t want a new way to restrict legitimate news to spring out of the ashes.

[oswaldactedalone]

7. Great post!!

[Vinnie From Indy]

10. Gawker tried that defense and it didn't work for them

AMI and Pecker are in deep shit!

[BumRushDaShow]

12. "precedent that blows up legitimate news orgs when disagreement about publishing content arise."

Seems the issue in this case however, is not about "publishing" but about publishing with an intent and a threat demanding a quid pro quo regarding Bezo's countervailing action against the publisher. They had already "published" some content and they started blackmailing him after he started investigating the source of their material.

Interesting discussion of the terms -

Jeff Bezos Said He Was a Victim of Extortion and Blackmail. What’s the Difference?

By Matthew Haag

Feb. 8, 2019

<...>

Extortion vs. blackmail

Extortion and blackmail are similar concepts with overlapping definitions. “They are very, very similar,” Mr. Nettles said. “You could say that blackmail is a specific subset of extortion.”

With extortion, a person makes a threat, often physical or destructive, to obtain something or to force someone to do something. The textbook example is the mafia warning: Pay me money or I will hurt you. In 2004, an underboss of the Gambino crime family was charged and later convicted in an extortion scheme that involved a Connecticut nightclub owner paying the family for “protection.”

With blackmail, a person threatens to reveal embarrassing or damaging information if a demand is not met. That demand can be for money or something else of value. In 1792, Alexander Hamilton paid $1,000 to the husband of a woman he was having an affair with, after the man threatened to reveal the relationship. While Hamilton paid the initial amount, he ignored subsequent demands.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/08/us/blackmail-vs-extortion-difference.html

[PatrickforO]

8. Why of course they did! That Mr Pecker is just the absolute

epitome of responsible journalism!

I loved the Bezos handled this. Like AOC, Warren and the rest, I believe a society with billionaires is an immoral society, but that said, I still like the way Bezos handled this.

[Cha]

9. What are they gonna say? That they're dirty

extortionists to help their asshole traitortrump?

[Jeffersons Ghost]

11. K&R for a 5th rec n/t

[GulfCoast66]

13. Since everything in that rag is a lie...

[dalton99a]

14. Here are all the laws American Media Inc. may have broken

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/02/jeff-bezos-american-media-national-enquirer-blackmail.html
The National Enquirer’s Alleged Threats Against Jeff Bezos Have Put It in Enormous Legal Jeopardy
Here are all the laws American Media Inc. may have broken in going after the Amazon CEO.
By Frank Bowman
Feb 08, 20193:09 PM

...

First, AMI’s emails pretty plainly satisfy the elements of federal extortion, 18 U.S.C. §875(d), which prohibits transmitting a communication in interstate commerce “containing any threat to injure the … reputation of the addressee” in order to extort “money or other thing of value.” The emails are in interstate commerce. The threat was to Bezos’ reputation. AMI might argue that it wasn’t demanding a “thing of value,” but under federal law, that’s almost certainly wrong.

The term thing of value extends to intangibles and even to things without any transferrable monetary worth, like cessation of a criminal prosecution, continuation of a sexual relationship, or even an apology. The demand that Bezos refrain from attributing political motive to AMI could itself be a “thing of value.” But even if that were not the case, a release of potential legal claims plainly is a thing of economic value. So it appears that AMI, as a corporate entity; Fine, its lawyer; and anyone within the corporation who approved Fine’s demands could potentially be charged with felony extortion.

Second, by its terms, AMI’s nonprosecution agreement with the Southern District of New York remains effective only so long as AMI commits no further crimes. An attempt to extort Bezos would almost certainly violate the agreement.

At one level, that doesn’t matter very much. The only entity the SDNY promised not to prosecute was AMI, the company, and only for election-law violations committed in 2016. The agreement placed no limitation on prosecutions of individual persons for anything (including the 2016 hush money payments), and it never limited the government from prosecuting AMI or anyone else for future crimes. So regardless of the terms of the nonprosecution agreement, it does not bar prosecution of AMI and its employees for the alleged Bezos extortion.

....

[marble falls]

15. Weeeellllll, now they do "believe fervently". I told the cop I believed fevently that I didn't ...

run that light and was acting within the law. The tape at the light and the cop disagreed and I got a ticket and a fine. How fair is that?