The Enquirer (and Trump and Saudi Arabia?) Tries To Blackmail Jeff Bezos

[AGBF]

"The Enquirer" owned by AMI and run by Trump close friend David Becker, attempted to blackmail and extort the wealthiest man in the world, Jeff Bezos...by e-mail. They picked on the wrong man. Although Becker and "The Enquirer" had exposed an extra-marital affair Bezos was having, precipitating his divorce from his wife of 25 years, he refused to give in when they threatened to publish photos of him and his female friend if he did not comply with demands that he stop his investigation of AMI and also stop his assertions that their vendetta against him was political in nature.

Jeff Bezos is the owner of "The Washington Post" which employed the late writer Jamal Khashoggi. Khashoggi was brutally murdered, dismembered, and beheaded by Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia for criticizing his regime in "The Washington Post". Donald Trump refused to withdraw his backing of Saudi Arabia, despite widespread bipartisan congressional disapproval. The Saudi regime would not be unhappy to see "The Washington Post", which has continued to write about Khashoggi and how they plotted his murder, suffer. Donald Trump has made no secret of his hatred for Jeff Bezos and has targeted Amazon, even trying to make the USPS charge it more for shipping.

Contributors to this morning's MSNBC show "Morning Joe" make a great case for a Saudi Arabia/Trump/David Becker connection to bring down Jeff Bezos.

 

[bludiva]

The Saudi Arabia connection didn't occur to me but what did is you'd think Bezos of all people would know sending risque digital photos into the world is a bad idea. Also, get the divorce before you start cheating. But good on him for not caving to the blackmail.

 

[AGBF]

Excerpted from from "Common Dreams"
Friday, February 08, 2019
"Did the National Enquirer Blackmail Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to Protect the Saudi Crown Prince?"

by
Juan Cole

"In short, there is every reason to believe that Pecker is entangled with the Saudi royal court of King Salman, perhaps, as Bezos alleges, in search of investment opportunities.

David Pecker’s attempt to blackmail Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos would not ordinarily attract my eye. Except for this paragraph:

'And sometimes Mr. Pecker mixes it all together:

'After Mr. Trump became president, he rewarded Mr. Pecker’s loyalty with a White House dinner to which the media executive brought a guest with important ties to the royals in Saudi Arabia. At the time, Mr. Pecker was pursuing business there while also hunting for financing for acquisitions…'


We knew that Pecker had brought the French investment banker and Saudi publicist Kacy Grine to the White House.


And Spencer Ackerman had reported on Pecker’s strange move to put a pro-Saudi glossy magazine in grocery store check out lanes in spring of 2018. It is as though he thought American housewives would thrill to the soap opera in Riyadh, where the Dr. Jekyll-and-Mr.-Hyde crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman had in summer of 2017 sidelined his rival Mohammed Bin Nayef, dethroning him as crown prince and greedily taking his place, before he kidnapped many in the Saudi elite to shake them down for $100 bn while imprisoning them in the Ritz Carlton. Days of Our Lives had nothing on the Saudis.


In short, there is every reason to believe that Pecker is entangled with the Saudi royal court of King Salman, perhaps, as Bezos alleges, in search of investment opportunities.

One question I have long had is whether investigators looking at the Russian element in the election of Trump are not unduly downplaying a United Arab Emirates and Saudi angle. That is, did those two oil monarchies help put Trump in power in the first place, and is there a prehistory to their entanglements with his circle?

But what Bezos goes on to allege is that he had hired a private investigator to find out how Pecker got hold of his texts and exchanges of smartphone photographs with his lover, Lauren Sanchez.

And the investigator, Gavin de Becker, looked into whether Pecker’s National Inquirer is influence-peddling for Saudi Arabia for some sort of quid pro quo.

Bezos also hints that Pecker was upset about the Washington Post’s quest to get to the bottom of the Saudi government’s murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi on October 2, 2018. Bezos owns the Post, though he maintains he is a hands-off owner.

Bezos alleges that the investigation of the Saudi connection most alarmed Mr. Pecker, and precipitated the attempt to blackmail the Amazon CEO into falling silent and backing off, with the threat of releasing further compromising photographs and text messages of a private nature.

Ronan Farrow said on Twitter that Pecker’s hired gun, Australian Dylan Howard, had also attempted to intimidate him when he was investigating Harvey Weinstein’s sexual harassment of all the women in Hollywood."

https://www.commondreams.org/views/...amazons-jeff-bezos-protect-saudi-crown-prince

 

[Calliecake]

It will be interesting to see how this story plays out in regards to the Saudi’s, AMI and Trump.

 

[AGBF]

"The NY Post" said it well.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/08/opinion/bezos-national-enquirer-blackmail.html