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PostPosted: 02/08/19 9:32 am • # 1 
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This story is co-opting nearly all the oxygen online since late yesterday ~ I'm still reading/sorting thru all the commentaries before posting any ~ but, as usual, Steve Benen points us to the solid perspective to make sense of the furor ~ Sooz

At the intersection of Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump’s favorite tabloid
02/08/19 08:45 AM
By Steve Benen

[Video, The Rachel Maddow Show, 2/7/19, 9:00 PM ET, "Bezos: National Enquirer made extortion threat over investigation", accessible via the end link.]

Once in a while, we’re confronted with a story that’s so unusual, it’s tough to know where to start. In this case, it’s probably best to start with the end and work backwards.

Quote:
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos accused the National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., of “extortion and blackmail” on Thursday for threatening to publish scandalous photos of him and his girlfriend if he didn’t drop an investigation into how the tabloid obtained text messages exposing his extra-marital affair.

According to the emails that Bezos published, which have not been independently reviewed by NBC News, AMI threatened to publish texts from Bezos and his girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez, that included photos of a sexual nature. In exchange for withholding the photos, AMI demanded that Bezos stop the Washington Post, which he owns, from reporting about political motivations behind the National Enquirer’s initial reports about his relationship with the former TV anchor.

Bezos explained these developments in a lengthy blog post published at Medium, which appeared to include the written messages he’d received from AMI. American Media Inc., led by a prominent Donald Trump ally named David Pecker, has not yet commented.

But to appreciate the significance of all of this, we’re going to have to back up a bit.

Michael Cohen’s many crimes, committed during his tenure as Trump’s personal attorney and “fixer,” have been well documented, but in some cases, they were also connected to his boss’ favorite supermarket tabloid. Specifically, Cohen made pre-election hush-money payments to two women, Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, who allegedly had extra-marital affairs with the president.

But as Cohen received his three-year prison sentence for this and other misdeeds, prosecutors also reached an agreement with AMI and its flagship tabloid. The National Enquirer’s publisher admitted last year that it paid hush money to Trump’s alleged mistresses and worked with Trump’s campaign to advance his candidacy, in defiance of federal campaign finance laws.

The company avoided prosecution by providing “substantial and important assistance in this investigation” – though that non-prosecution agreement came with some conditions.

Indeed, prosecutors told AMI it won’t face charges so long as it continues to cooperate and agrees not to commit any crimes over the next three years. If the media company violated any part of that non-prosecution agreement, all bets would be off.

Meanwhile, there’s the National Enquirer’s ally in the Oval Office, who’s made no secret of his personal contempt for the Washington Post and its owner, Jeff Bezos. It therefore raised a few eyebrows when the tabloid recently published intimate text messages between Bezos and an alleged mistress, which contributed to the breakup of the Amazon CEO’s marriage.

Donald Trump responded to that story with unseemly glee and praised the National Enquirer for its work.

It led many observers to wonder whether the tabloid targeted a Trump nemesis as part of a political agenda, or whether that was simply a coincidence. (There’s also a Saudi Arabian angle to all of this that gets a little complicated.)

In fact, it led Bezos to begin exploring the motivations behind the National Enquirer’s reporting about him. As Bezos put it in his blog post, AMI’s David Pecker was reportedly “apoplectic” about the investigation. “A few days after hearing about Mr. Pecker’s apoplexy,” Bezos added, “we were approached, verbally at first, with an offer. They said they had more of my text messages and photos that they would publish if we didn’t stop our investigation.”

It became the basis for an offer: if Bezos didn’t reject arguments about possible political motivations for the National Enquirer’s reporting, AMI would further embarrass Bezos.

Keep in mind, AMI has already exposed Bezos’ affair, just as it’s already admitted to illegally assisting Trump in 2016. Why make new threats against Bezos over allegations that its reporting might be politically motivated?

Might it have something to do with that non-prosecution agreement, which is still in effect, and which involves pending legal issues?

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/the-intersection-jeff-bezos-and-donald-trumps-favorite-tabloid


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PostPosted: 02/08/19 9:50 am • # 2 
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More legit detail and connecting the dots here ~ :eek ~ Sooz

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos accuses Trump-loving National Enquirer of ‘blackmail’ in shocking statement
Agence France-Presse / 08 Feb 2019 at 09:08 ET

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has accused the publisher of the tabloid National Enquirer, who has been described as a close friend of President Donald Trump, of trying to blackmail him over lurid photos.

Bezos, the world’s richest person, owns The Washington Post, a frequent target of Trump as he assails the US media as “enemy of the people” and a source of fake news.

The Post was also one of the leading news outlets in coverage of the murder last year of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a Post columnist.

Trump has refused to criticize Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has been widely accused of ordering the murder.

Last month Trump took aim at Bezos — referring to him as ‘Bozo’ — in what appeared to be an allusion to National Enquirer reporting of the billionaire’s relationship with former news anchor and entertainment reporter Lauren Sanchez.

“So sorry to hear the news about Jeff Bozo being taken down by a competitor whose reporting, I understand, is far more accurate than the reporting in his lobbyist newspaper, the Amazon Washington Post,” he tweeted.

“Hopefully the paper will soon be placed in better & more responsible hands!”

The National Enquirer accessed private text messages and last month reported that Bezos had an extramarital affair with Sanchez — a leak that led to his divorce.

On Thursday, Bezos said the tabloid’s parent company had threatened to publish intimate photographs he sent to his mistress.

In a post on the online platform Medium, Bezos said Enquirer publisher American Media Inc (AMI), led by David Pecker, a friend of Trump, had threatened to publish the photos if he did not halt an investigation into the motives behind the leak.

The Enquirer had demanded that he and security consultant Gavin de Becker, who is leading the probe, publically state they had “no knowledge or basis for suggesting that AMI’s coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces”, Bezos added.

De Becker mentioned in a recent Daily Beast interview that “strong leads point to political motives” — and that he was interested in Lauren Sanchez’s brother Michael, a vocal supporter of Trump with links to his inner circle, as a possible perpetrator.

In his Medium post, Bezos pointed to AMI and Pecker’s previous cooperation with Trump — including payments made to suppress negative stories, currently under investigation by federal prosecutors. One involves a former Playboy model who said she had an affair with Trump.

The hush-money payment, and a similar one to another woman, was made on the eve of Trump’s 2016 presidential election victory.

Trump is suspected of campaign finance violations because of the disbursements on grounds they were made to affect the outcome of the vote and should therefore have been reported to government campaign monitors.

In a deal announced with federal prosecutors late last year, AMI said it would cooperate with those prosecutors. It admitted that before the election it had paid $150,000 to the ex-model, Karen McDougal, to silence her allegations of an affair with Trump. Prosecutors said they would not charge AMI.

Bezos, his newspaper and Amazon are all regular targets of Trump on Twitter.

Bezos, in his post, also raised what he called AMI’s links to Saudi Arabia.

“My ownership of the Washington Post is a complexifier for me. It’s unavoidable that certain powerful people who experience Washington Post news coverage will wrongly conclude I am their enemy,” Bezos wrote in the blog post.

“President Trump is one of those people, obvious by his many tweets. Also, The Post’s essential and unrelenting coverage of the murder of its columnist Jamal Khashoggi is undoubtedly unpopular in certain circles.”

He added: “Rather than capitulate to extortion and blackmail, I’ve decided to publish exactly what they sent me, despite the personal cost and embarrassment they threaten,” Bezos wrote. His post, entitled “No thank you, Mr. Pecker”, included copies of emails from AMI.

“Of course I don’t want personal photos published, but I also won’t participate in their well-known practise of blackmail, political favors, political attacks, and corruption. I prefer to stand up, roll this log over, and see what crawls out,” he added.

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/02/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-accuses-trump-loving-national-enquirer-blackmail-shocking-statement/


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PostPosted: 02/08/19 6:51 pm • # 3 
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This will get worse, much worse, before it's over ~ :ey ~ Sooz

Farrow, Other Reporters Chime In: We Were Blackmailed By Nat’l Enquirer Too
By Kate Riga / February 8, 2019 9:34 am

Reporter Ronan Farrow retweeted Jeff Bezos Friday, saying that he and “at least one other prominent journalist” had received similar blackmailing attempts from American Media Inc., the parent company of the National Enquirer, in the past.

Quote:
I and at least one other prominent journalist involved in breaking stories about the National Enquirer’s arrangement with Trump fielded similar “stop digging or we’ll ruin you” blackmail efforts from AMI. (I did not engage as I don’t cut deals with subjects of ongoing reporting.) https://t.co/kHQdWIkVjV

— Ronan Farrow (@RonanFarrow) February 8, 2019

Reporters at other outlets had similar stories.

Former AP editor:

Quote:
We were warned explicitly by insiders that AMI had hired private investigators to dig into backgrounds of @AP journalists looking into the tabloid’s efforts on behalf of Trump. Never saw evidence of this either way, and it didn’t stop our reporting.

— Ted Bridis (@tbridis) February 8, 2019

Daily Beast editor-in-chief:

Quote:
“In the process of reporting those stories, The Beast and a member of its staff were threatened by AMI’s attorneys.” https://t.co/BuaoenHGJe

— Noah Shachtman (@NoahShachtman) February 8, 2019

Bezos wrote a blog post Thursday in which he claimed that the National Enquirer had attempted to blackmail him with leaked sexts he sent to his mistress unless he stopped poking around into how the magazine obtained their communications.

Bezos says in the post that other people have approached him with similar stories.

“Numerous people have contacted our investigation team about their similar experiences with AMI, and how they needed to capitulate because, for example, their livelihoods were at stake,” he writes.

Bezos’ investigators think that a “government entity” may have given the National Enquirer the photos and that the attack is politically motivated.

American Media released a statement soon after the tweets Friday, saying that they would conduct an internal investigation based upon Bezos’ allegations.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/farrow-other-reporters-say-blackmailed-by-national-enquirer


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