Where's this Bezos AMI thing going? (Reup) By Josh Marshall

Where’s This Bezos/AMI Thing Going?

Editor’s Blog – Talking Points Memo / by Josh Marshall / 1h The Daily Beast published an article last night that, through some circuitous and partly opaque sourcing, seemed to confirm a key point: At least in the narrowest sense, The National Enquirer got the Bezos text message from Michael Sanchez, the Trump-supporting brother of Bezos’s girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez.

The principal sourcing comes from the AMI side.

But critically, Bezos’s investigators don’t really appear to contest that point.

Indeed, Bezos investigator Gavin de Becker tells the Beast that their “investigation into who initially provided the texts to the National Enquirer, and why it was done—that investigation is now complete.

We have turned our conclusions over to our attorneys for referral to law enforcement.” de Becker goes on to say this: “Our investigation into what the National Enquirer and [publisher] AMI did after they received the initial texts—that investigation is ongoing.” It’s possible I’m misreading the sourcing of the Beast article.

But I doubt it.

So where does this leave us?

Is this just a fairly mundane case of filial backstabbing plutocrat dirty laundry.

If it’s just that, it’s really no more interesting than any other supermarket tabloid affair story.

Last night I noted that, other than conjectures, we’re really going only on Bezos’s Thursday post in thinking there might be a Saudi or Trump connection to this drama.

So where does this leave us?

I discussed and corresponded over the weekend with some people who know Bezos.

I remain convinced about what I said over the weekend.

Even for the richest man in the world, one who owns one of the biggest companies, one of the country’s biggest newspapers and more, this is a big, big move, one fraught with all sorts of peril reputational and otherwise, far beyond the embarrassing photos.

I don’t think he’d push this Saudi angle over some vague suggestions.

In email correspondence a few of you have told me that what really matters is the extortion, not precisely how the Enquirer got the texts.

I don’t agree with this.

If we look at the totality of what we’ve learned about the Enquirer in the last three years, I think we see that they’re part of one story.

The Enquirer appears to operate as an attack and extortion operation, weaponizing secrets against its enemies and leveraging those secrets to enforce silence.

Critically, who counts as an enemy is usually who counts as enemies to its friends, people like Trump, almost certainly other powerful figures as yet unrevealed and even states like Saudi Arabia.

Your garden variety movie star paparazzi photos and celebrity break-ups appear to be a sidelight to this or a complementary operation functioning in parallel.

What all that adds up to is that the extortion and the original motivation for running the stories are likely one and same.

Indeed, the fact that the Enquirer may have gotten the texts from Sanchez, in the narrowest sense, doesn’t really resolve the question.

Because where did he get them?

Did she forward him a few text messages?

Did she leave her phone on a kitchen counter without password protection?

Did he get photos in the same way?

I doubt it’s that simple.

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