« I prefer to stand up, roll this log over, and see what crawls out. »
I am very excited for this new episode in our national drama, in which the world’s richest man publicly accuses allies of the president of extorting him with private photos of his genitalia if he doesn’t stop accusing them of politically driven hatchet jobs.
For dramatic purposes, it can’t end any other way except with Bezos producing evidence that Trump himself put the Enquirer up to digging up dirt on him, as revenge for the Washington Post’s negative coverage of POTUS. And then we’ll have a fun national debate over whether it’s wrong for the president to use scandal sheets to try to destroy his political enemies.
I wonder where Ted Cruz would come down on that one.
You should read all of this, as it is something else:
In the AMI letters I’m making public, you will see the precise details of their extortionate proposal: They will publish the personal photos unless Gavin de Becker and I make the specific false public statement to the press that we “have no knowledge or basis for suggesting that AMI’s coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces.”
If we do not agree to affirmatively publicize that specific lie, they say they’ll publish the photos, and quickly. And there’s an associated threat: They’ll keep the photos on hand and publish them in the future if we ever deviate from that lie…
These communications cement AMI’s long-earned reputation for weaponizing journalistic privileges, hiding behind important protections, and ignoring the tenets and purpose of true journalism. Of course I don’t want personal photos published, but I also 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.
He reprints no fewer than three emails that AMI’s legal team sent him, one of which describes in detail the personal photos of Bezos they claim they’ve obtained. (“A shirtless Mr. Bezos holding his phone in his left hand — while wearing his wedding ring. He’s wearing either tight black cargo pants or shorts — and his semi-erect manhood is penetrating the zipper of said garment.
