Jeff Bezos has accused the National Enquirer of extortion and blackmail in a stunning blog post. The richest man in the world says that the leading tabloid in the country threatened to release his intimate photos if he failed to comply with their demands. Bezos who founded Amazon in 1994 also owns the Washington Post. The National Enquirer published a story last month of his affair with Lauren Sanchez. Lauren worked as a host in the Fox News’s show “So You Think You Can Dance” among others. It’s now emerging that the tabloid had more information about this affair than it admitted during the exposé.
The explosive blog post by the Amazon CEO was headlined by the words “No Thank You, Mr. Pecker.” It appeared to target David J. Pecker, the head of the National Enquirer. Bezos wrote the post digressively accusing the tabloid of threatening to publish his intimate photos including one “below the belt” selfie if he didn’t come out publicly and confirm that the story published on his extramarital affair wasn’t politically motivated. Bezos said that even though the threat got his attention, it wasn’t in the manner the tabloid expected.
The tussle between the National Enquirer and Bezos started at the beginning of the year when the tabloid published details of Bezos affair. This came barely days after the Amazon CEO announced that he will be divorcing his wife of 25 years MacKenzie. The Enquirer dedicated a total of 11 pages to this story. It was even considered the biggest investigation in the history of the tabloid. The Enquirer bragged that it had tracked Bezos and his lover across various states in the US covering thousands of miles in the process.
The 11-page article also featured paparazzi shots of the two arriving in a beachfront property in Santa Monica which the tabloid called “Bezos’s love nest.” But it didn’t end there. The tabloid also went on to publish intimate text messages that Bezos had sent to Sanchez. Although the National Enquirer is known for this kind of stories, this was actually the first time it was targeting a major tech executive. The people covered in the tabloid are mostly politicians.
But Bezos is not just any tech executive. The richest man in the world has had a long-standing feud with president Donald Trump. Many analysts were quick to point that it’s possible that this aggressive investigation against him could have been politically motivated. After all, Pecker who heads the tabloid has a very close relationship with the president. The National Enquirer was also at the center of the hush money payment scandal involving Trump and two women who claimed they had an affair with him including a former porn star.
Once the story of the extra-marital affair was published, Bezos vowed to go after the publisher. The Amazon CEO has maintained that the investigation was politically motivated. The explosive blog post could actually vindicate this but more could still come out in the coming days.
