Legions of Twitter users bashed National Enquirer chief David Pecker after Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said Pecker tried to “blackmail” him to intervene in a Washington Post investigation of Enquirer parent company American Media Inc.
Bezos, in a blog post Thursday on Medium, accused intermediaries of Pecker, who is chairman of AMI, of threatening to publish 10 embarrassing photos of Bezos — including a “dick pic” selfie.
Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, attached an email allegedly from AMI content manager Dylan Howard. “In the interests of expediting the situation and with the Washington Post poised to publish unsubstantiated rumors [about] the National Enquirer ... I wanted to describe to you the photos obtained during our news gathering,” the letter stated. It concluded: “It would give no editor pleasure to send this email. I hope common sense would prevail — and quickly.”
Bezos declared that he “won’t participate in their well-known practice of blackmail, political favors, political attacks, and corruption. I prefer to stand up, roll this log over, and see what crawls out.”
If true, attempted blackmail would be particularly astonishing given that Pecker is already cooperating with officials in a criminal investigation — for immunity. He has admitted to participating in a “catch and kill” scheme to purchase and bury stories from women during the presidential campaign who had claimed to have had affairs with Donald Trump.
Neither Pecker nor AMI has commented on the Medium post.
Twitter users were stunned — and giddy that Bezos spilled.