Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos accuses US taboid of blackmail over intimate photos

[TheWorldNewsOrg]

[admin]

Just as your Medium manifesto was “gaining steam” with 21 claps, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos stopped all your momentum with a very personal postaccusing AMI, the parent company of the National Enquirer, of extortion and blackmail.

The backstory: Bezos and his wife MacKenzie recently announced plans for a high-profile divorce. The National Enquirer then published articles describing a relationship between Bezos and former TV anchor Lauren Sanchez. There were...juicy texts involved.

Let’s walk through this next part step-by-step

As described in Bezos’s blog post...

1. He “engaged investigators” to determine the source of the leaks and the motivation behind the Enquirer’s actions.
2. AMI’s Chief Content Officer sent an email saying that he obtained intimate photos of both Bezos and Sanchez (we’ll stop there...this is a PG newsletter after all).
3. An offer was made: AMI wouldn’t release the photos if Bezos said publicly the leaks weren’t politically motivated. Bezos refused, published this blog, and here we are.

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

If your head is spinning...we’ve got good news

There’s more. Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, which has largely been critical of the Trump administration. David Pecker, the chairman and CEO of AMI, has a cozy relationship with the president, who himself has lashed out at Bezos once or five times. That perhaps helps explain the talk of “political” motivations.

We can find no better bottom line than the NYT: 

• “Mr. 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 Mr. Trump’s fight with the media.”

Via Morning Brew