Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos made headlines recently with a publicly announced divorced from his long-time wife MacKenzie.
Now, he claims a local tabloid is attempting to blackmail him with steamy leaked photos of him and a recent love interest.
Images courtesy: Reuters
The richest man alive posted a surprising blog entry on Medium this week, detailing how local publication National Enquirer is threatening to leak his nude photos. Titled, "No thank you, Mr. Pecker," in it Bezos accuses the tabloid of threatening to publish intimate photos of him with Lauren Sanchez, the news anchor and reporter with whom he was supposedly having an affair.
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Bezos claims the National Enquirer wants him, in order to avoid having the photos leaked, publicly state that the publication's parent company American Media Inc.'s investigation into his personal life was never "politically motivated or influenced by political forces."
It was a detailed investigation by the National Enquirer into Bezos' affair that eventually led to his marriage's downfall last month. It's still unclear though just how political forces play a part here.
Bezos and his former wife MacKenzie
According to US press, American Media Inc has been involved in a practice recently where they seek to buy rights to incriminating evidence and prevent it from ever hitting newsstands. Supposedly, they also did this for President Trump before his campaign. Bezos claims he was conducting his own investigation into how the publication obtained his private messages with Sanchez, and their lawyers are now attempting to strong-arm him in order to avoid this practice of news suppression (and their political ties) from coming to light.
"If your client agrees to cease and desist such defamatory behavior, we are willing to engage in constructive conversations regarding the texts and photos which we have in our possession," read one emails sent to the Bezos' legal team.
These photos supposedly include Bezos in his briefs, naked selfies in a bathroom, and an explicit dick pic as well.
"Well, that [the email] got my attention", Bezos wrote in the blog post. "But not in the way they likely hoped. 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?"
As such, the CEO says he's instead chosen to run the risk of those photos being published in order to publicise the company's extortionary tactics. "Be assured, no real journalists ever propose anything like what is happening here,"he says. "Nothing I might write here could tell the National Enquirer story as eloquently as their own words."