When the National Enquirer’s owner agreed to cooperate in a campaign finance investigation of its payment to a former Playboy model, it obtained an immunity deal that federal prosecutors warned could be voided if the tabloid owner committed any crimes afterward.
Less than five months later, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, claimed publicly that American Media Inc. had threatened to publish salacious photos of him and his mistress, Lauren Sanchez, unless he ended an investigation into how the National Enquirer obtained racy, private messages between the two and said publicly the tabloid’s coverage wasn’t politically motivated.
“If in my position I can’t stand up to this kind of extortion, how many people can?” Bezos wrote. “Be assured, no real journalists ever propose anything like what is happening here: I will not report embarrassing information about you if you do X for me. And if you don’t do X quickly, I will report the embarrassing information.”
Whether the actions Bezos described constitute either extortion or blackmail under the law will be up to prosecutors to determine. Blackmail typically involves a threat to share embarrassing information, which wouldn’t ordinarily be illegal, in return for money or something else of value, while extortion involves seeking the same end through the threat of an illegal act, often physical violence.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, which reached the immunity agreement with AMI, declined to comment Friday. A spokesman for AMI said the publisher “fervently believes” its actions were legal and said it was in “good faith” negotiations with Bezos at the time he made the claims.
The emails published by the billionaire included suggestions by AMI that his representatives had defamed the company with suggestions that its reporting was politically motivated.
American Media’s CEO, David Pecker, was friendly for years with President Trump, who has publicly targeted Bezos since winning the 2016 election. Arguing that he’s a victim of “presidential harassment” because of investigations into whether his campaign worked with Russia, Trump has derided critical articles including those in the Washington Post, which Bezos owns, as “fake news.”
Pecker had previously helped Trump’s campaign by directing his company to pay $150,000 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal for the rights to her story about a decade-old affair with the then-entertainer, which it never published, the government said in its nonprosecution agreement with American Media. In August 2015, Pecker had offered to use the same tactics more broadly to help Trump’s campaign, prosecutors said.
Among the immunity deal’s provisions were requirements that AMI establish written standards for its executives and editorial employees on how federal election laws apply to its business and that it consult with attorneys to ensure payments for stories about anyone running for public office don’t violate those laws.
It was further conditioned on AMI committing “no crimes whatsoever,” a standard feature of such agreements.
“If prosecutors find that this exchange with Jeff Bezos was an additional crime, then they have the right to void the agreement,” said Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor now in private practice. “Watching your nonprosecution agreement with a cooperating witness fall apart is the last thing you want to see happen, because it creates a giant headache.”
Bezos said Thursday that he’s not only the person to encounter threats from American Media. “Numerous people” contacted his investigators about similar experiences, saying they were forced to give in because their livelihoods were threatened, he wrote. Two journalists, including Ronan Farrow, a contributing writer for the New Yorker, subsequently described similar threats on Twitter.
I and at least one other prominent journalist involved in breaking stories about the National Enquirer’s arrangement with Trump fielded similar “stop digging or we’ll ruin you” blackmail efforts from AMI. (I did not engage as I don’t cut deals with subjects of ongoing reporting.) https://t.co/kHQdWIkVjV
— Ronan Farrow (@RonanFarrow) February 8, 2019
Despite American Media’s belief in its innocence, its board has “determined that it should promptly and thoroughly investigate the claims” and will take whatever action is necessary, a company spokesman said Friday.
One argument AMI might make in its own defense is pointing out that the letters published by Bezos were sent to an attorney acting on his behalf, Mintz noted.
That would enable the company to say that its offer not to publish sexually suggestive photos of the billionaire and his mistress, one of which showed him partially unclothed, in return for concessions by Bezos was “part of negotiation over a potential civil lawsuit and not in the nature of extortion,” Mintz said. “It’s far from clear-cut.”
