Source: Morgan Lieberman / Getty
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is in the center of a controversy regarding his affair and impending divorce, and he’s addressed the potential of blackmail by one of the nation’s top tabloids. In an op-ed piece, Bezos blasted the National Enquirer about threatening to leak nude photos of him and welcoming the fallout should it come.
In the op-ed published on Medium, Bezos doesn’t shy away from the potential for exposure in revealing that AMI, the company which owns the Enquirer and noting publication owner David Pecker’s alignment with President Donald Trump, made him an offer to keep intimate conversations from the public eye.
From Medium:
Back to the story: Several days ago, an AMI leader advised us that Mr. Pecker is “apoplectic” about our investigation. For reasons still to be better understood, the Saudi angle seems to hit a particularly sensitive nerve.
A few days after hearing about Mr. Pecker’s apoplexy, 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.
My lawyers argued that AMI has no right to publish photos since any person holds the copyright to their own photos, and since the photos in themselves don’t add anything newsworthy.
AMI’s claim of newsworthiness is that the photos are necessary to show Amazon shareholders that my business judgment is terrible. I founded Amazon in my garage 24 years ago, and drove all the packages to the post office myself. Today, Amazon employs more than 600,000 people, just finished its most profitable year ever, even while investing heavily in new initiatives, and it’s usually somewhere between the #1 and #5 most valuable company in the world. I will let those results speak for themselves.
Talk your sh*t, King.
The entire piece is a fascinating slap in the face towards the tabloid and you can read the rest of Jeff Bezos stunting on the National Enquirer here.
—
Photo: Getty
