In the blog post published on Medium, Bezos alleged that AMI threatened to release more compromising photos of him if he didn't stop his probe into how the National Enquirer obtained private text messages between him and his girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez.
A former senior editor for the National Enquirer said Friday that he believes the tabloid's story on Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' infidelity was a way for the publishing company's chief executive to make amends with President Trump. In it, AMI proposed a public acknowledgment from Bezos and de Becker that "they have no knowledge or basis for suggesting that (AMI's) coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces".
Mr Bezos said his ownership of the Washington Post was a "complexifier" for him because he had made enemies of "certain powerful people", including President Donald Trump, who is a friend of AMI's boss David Pecker. Nonetheless, in light of the nature of the allegations published by Mr. Bezos, the Board has convened and determined that it should promptly and thoroughly investigate the claims.
The newspaper's owner AMI reached the deal past year after paying $150,000 to silence Karen McDougal, a former Playboy model who had allegedly had an affair with Donald Trump.
Mr Bezos and his wife announced last month that they were divorcing after 25 years of marriage.
Representatives for Chatham, Cooperman, AMI and the White House didn't immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday. "I prefer to stand up, roll this log over, and see what crawls out", Bezos says. In a blockbuster blog post titled "No thank you, Mr. Pecker", Bezos on Thursday evening accused Pecker of an "extortion and blackmail" attempt. AMI has entered into a non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors in NY and is cooperating in the investigation into its payment to former Playboy model Karen McDougal to suppress a story about her claimed affair with Trump.
Bezos said he chose to publish the emails sent to his team "rather than capitulate to extortion and blackmail, " despite the "personal cost and embarrassment they threaten". "President Trump is one of those people, obvious by his many tweets".
The U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan declined to comment.
AMI, according to Bezos, had alerted him that the Enquirer had a collection of racy photos of him and Sanchez.
That prompted Bezos to launch an investigation into the Enquirer, and how it was able to obtain such intimate material.
In his Medium post, Bezos pointed to AMI and Pecker's previous cooperation with Trump - including payments made to suppress negative stories, now under investigation by federal prosecutors.
Several days ago, someone at AMI told Bezos' team that the company's CEO, David Pecker, was "apoplectic" about the investigation, Bezos said.
A long-simmering feud between Donald Trump and Jeff Bezos took a freaky turn after the multibillionaire accused allies of the president of brazenly trying to extort him. But he also threatens to publish the photos if Bezos and his associates breach the agreement.
Farrow has written extensively about AMI's "catch and kill" practice, in which the publisher buys stories in order to bury them, and how such measures benefited Pecker's pal, Donald Trump, in the 2016 presidential campaign. He also said he had recommended his sister fire Mr de Becker. He did, however, post something after the initial National Enquirer story posted last month, calling Bezos "Jeff Bozo" and arguing that the tabloid was a more accurate source of news than the Washington Post.
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