Going on the offensive, the world’s richest man, 55-year-old Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos accused the parent company of the National Enquirer, AMI, of blackmail and extortion over lewd photographs Bezos texted to his Emmy Award-winning reporter girl friend Lauren Sanchez. Bezos, who’s been married to McKenzie Bezos for 25 years, with whom he had three children, apparently spent company time “sexting” photos to his mistress, somehow getting to the National Enquirer. While former Rep. Anthony Wiener (D-N.Y.), former husband to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s personal assistant Huma Abedin, resigned in disgrace June 21, 2011 for texting pictures of his private parts to an under-aged teenager, Bezos showed equally bad judgment texting lewd pics to Sanchez, whether she was of legal age or not. Not one media outlet questioned Bezos’s bad judgment.
Media outlets have turned the Bezo’s-National Enquirer scandal into a political hit by 72-year-old President Donald Trump. Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, accused Trump of using his friend National Enquirer CEO David Pecker to retaliate against Bezos for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s plea bargain with AMI for its role in killing the Susan McDougal story. McDougal claimed she had a one-night stand with Trump in 2006, for which Trump’s campaign team got McDougal to agree to sell her story to the National Enquirer for $150,000, a “catch-and-kill” to cover-up McDougal’s claims before the 2016 presidential election. While that all sounds good, 11 other women came forward with similar stories about Trump, calling into question why Trump didn’t try to buy off their silence.. Special Counsel Robert Mueller got Pecker to agree to a plea deal Dec. 15, 2018.
National Enquirer entered a deal with Mueller to escape prosecution for violating federal Campaign Finance laws, paying hush-money to silence a potential witness in a political campaign. Now Bezos accuses the National Enquire of blackmail and extortion, breaching its plea deal with the Special Counsel. But the fact that the National Enquirer has private lewd pics of Bezos has nothing to do with blackmail or extortion but Bezos’ recklessness and bad judgment. U.S. print and broadcast outlets have broad powers under the First Amendment to publish anything as long as the content is not obtained illegally. Bezos claims the National Enquirer was “politically motivated” in deciding to publish Bezos’ selfies of his private parts texted to Sanchez. How that amounts to blackmail or extortion is anyone’s guess. No one asked Bezos for cash to avoid publishing the photos.
Bezos claims that AMI CEO Pecker emailed him saying he would not publish the lewd pics if he admitted that paper had no political motive. Bezos claims that email amounts to blackmail and extortion. AMI attorney Elkan Abramowitz denied to ABC’s “This Week” with George Stepahanopoulos Feb. 9 any attempt to blackmail Bezos. “That is not extortion because all that AMI wanted was the truth,” said Abramowitz. Abramowitz called the email to Bezos part of a legitimate negotiation, not part of some blackmail scheme. Bezos accused AMI of having a special relationship to Saudi Arabia, due to AMI’s pro-Saudi publication. Bezos raises the Saudi link to whip up more anti-White House sentiment in the wake of the Saudi’s Oct. 22, 2018 Jamal Khashoggi assassination in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Khashoggi wrote anti-Saudi commentary for the Post two years.
Using the Khashoggi affair shows that Bezos was looking for any way to politicize AMI potential publication of his lewd selfies intended only for Sanchez. Bezos cleverly raised the blackmail and extortion issue to look like AMI breached its agreement with the Special Counsel regarding the Susan McDougal “catch-and-kill” story. Bezos claims that Sanchez’s brother Michael, a Trump supporter, leaked the lewd pics to the National Enquirer for political reasons. Grasping at straws, Bezos is doing everything possible to undo the damage from his abysmal judgment, passing lewd pics of himself to his girlfriend. Whether leaked by Lauren’s brother or not, Bezos took the selfies, now subject of today’s scandal. “It is absolutely not a crime to ask somebody to simply tell the truth—tell the truth that this was not politically motivated and we will print no more stories about it,” Abramowitz said.
Bezos brought disgrace on Amazon.com and all its companies, including the Washington Post, texting lewd pics of himself to his mistress, Lauren Sanchez. Whether or not his marriage was on the rocks with McKenzie has nothing to do with the abysmal judgment, not seen since the Anthony Wiener affair. Accusing AMI of blackmail or extortion raises eyebrows but doesn’t camouflage Bezos colossal immaturity and bad judgment. “How is this journalism, If you believe the photos are newsworthy?” asked Stephanopoulos, pretending that ABC wasn’t the first to publish the Billy Bush recording of Trump’s locker-room talk before the 2016 election. “There may be a different argument if we were talking about prior to the first publication, where hypothetically someone could say, ‘you give me a million dollars and we don’t publish this,’” said Abramowitz
