The world’s richest man just published an open letter on the internet, in which he describes embarrassing private photos of his genitalia, because he says a tabloid linked to the president of the United States is trying to extort him.
You just can’t make this stuff up
Bezos made the claim in a remarkable Medium post — “No thank you, Mr. Pecker” — describing what calls an “extortionate proposal” by executives from American Media Inc., the publisher that owns the National Enquirer.
Bezos alleges — backed up by what he says are emails from AMI executives — that AMI wanted him to announce that he doesn’t have any reason to believe the Enquirer was “politically motivated or influenced by political forces” when it published an expose about an affair he had had.
That is: Bezos says that AMI executives didn’t like the suggestion — floated in the Bezos-owned Washington Post, among other media outlets — that the Enquirer had run the story because of a longstanding relationship it had with Donald Trump, who has made a point of attacking Bezos, the Post and Amazon.
The trade, per Bezos and the text of correspondence he has published from AMI executives including AMI chief content officer Dylan Howard: If Bezos agreed to say that he didn’t think AMI ran the story because of Trump, AMI wouldn’t publish “unpublished texts and photos” that would presumably be embarrassing to Bezos and Lauren Sanchez, the woman he had been seeing.
Bezos’s response: To publish an email he says came from Howard, describing 10 photos Bezos wouldn’t want published, including a “below the belt selfie — otherwise colloquially known as a ‘d*ck pick.’”
Marty:
I am leaving the office for the night. I will be available on my cell — 917 XXX-XXXX.
However, in the interests of expediating this situation, and with The Washington Post poised to publish unsubstantiated rumors of The National Enquirer’s initial report, I wanted to describe to you the photos obtained during our newsgathering.
In addition to the “below the belt selfie — otherwise colloquially known as a ‘d*ck pick’” — The Enquirer obtained a further nine images. These include:
· Mr. Bezos face selfie at what appears to be a business meeting.
· Ms. Sanchez response — a photograph of her smoking a cigar in what appears to be a simulated oral sex scene.
· A shirtless Mr. Bezos holding his phone in his left hand — while wearing his wedding ring. He’s wearing either tight black cargo pants or shorts — and his semi-erect manhood is penetrating the zipper of said garment.
· A full-length body selfie of Mr. Bezos wearing just a pair of tight black boxer-briefs or trunks, with his phone in his left hand — while wearing his wedding ring.
· A selfie of Mr. Bezos fully clothed.
· A full-length scantily-clad body shot with short trunks.
· A naked selfie in a bathroom — while wearing his wedding ring. Mr. Bezos is wearing nothing but a white towel — and the top of his pubic region can be seen.
· Ms. Sanchez wearing a plunging red neckline dress revealing her cleavage and a glimpse of her nether region.
· Ms. Sanchez wearing a two-piece red bikini with gold detail dress revealing her cleavage.
It would give no editor pleasure to send this email. I hope common sense can prevail — and quickly.
Dylan.
Bezos’s goal here is presumably to deflate the Enquirer’s threat to use those photos.
He is also, he argues, making a point: “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? … These communications cement AMI’s long-earned reputation for weaponizing journalistic privileges, hiding behind important protections, and ignoring the tenets and purpose of true journalism. Of course I don’t want personal photos published, but I also won’t participate in their well-known practice of blackmail, political favors, political attacks, and corruption. I prefer to stand up, roll this log over, and see what crawls out.”
In a court document released last December, the tabloid publisher, American Media Inc., admitted to coordinating a hush-money payment with Trump’s 2016 campaign, reversing two years of denials.
The confession came as part of an immunity agreement with the U.S. attorney’s office in New York, made public shortly after Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, was sentenced to three years in prison over charges of tax fraud, campaign finance violations and lying to Congress.
But the disclosure might just be scratching the surface.
Based on court documents and a plethora of media reports, Trump and his aides have worked for years with the tabloid to kill incriminating stories.
AMI’s CEO David Pecker also had a decades-long copacetic friendship with Trump.
Legal experts say that could mean more legal peril for Trump, who has already been implicated in directing Cohen to work with the National Enquirer during the 2016 campaign to pay women in exchange for their silence about alleged affairs.
Trump has often criticized Bezos, the Post, and Amazon, and often incorrectly suggests that Amazon, not Bezos, owns the Post.
His enmity for Amazon has reportedly led him to ask the US Postal Service to raise shipping rates in an attempt to hurt Amazon.
On February 5 — the same day Howard reportedly emailed Bezos, describing the photos — the Washington Post published a twisty story listing competing possible motives behind the Enquirer’s expose.