The Wall Street Journal reports that the National Enquirer’s publisher paid $200,000 to obtain intimate texts between Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and his mistress Lauren Sanchez. American Media Inc., the supermarket tabloid’s publisher, reportedly paid that sum to Michael Sanchez, Lauren’s brother.
The Journal’s finding, attributed to people familiar with the matter, parallels the conclusion reached by private investigators working for Bezos as of early February. Those investigators reportedly found that Michael Sanchez had leaked the texts to the Enquirer, although they didn’t appear to conclude who might have paid for them.
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“The inside story of the deal answers many of the central questions about the high-profile fight between the nation’s best-known tabloid and the world’s richest man,” the Journal said.
Bezos has said AMI threatened to publish explicit photos of him unless he stopped investigating how the Enquirer obtained his private exchanges and publicly declared that the Enquirer’s coverage of him was not politically motivated.
“Mr. Sanchez said he didn’t want to ‘dignify’ the Journal’s reporting on the contract he struck,” the newspaper reported.
“He described the reporting on the contract as ‘old rumors’ from anonymous sources. Mr. Sanchez denied sending “the many penis selfies” but declined to comment on whether he provided photos of Mr. Bezos to the Enquirer.”
The full story is available online.
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