Jeff Bezos pushed an unfounded theory that Saudi Arabia was behind the revelation of his affair with Lauren Sanchez, a new book claims, which also says a picture that was purported to be of his penis was actually lifted from a gay escort site by her brother.
Bezos, 57, revealed in 2019 that he was the victim of an unsuccessful extortion attempt by the National Enquirer which published intimate text messages between him and Sanchez, 51, and claimed it had a 'cache of lewd selfies taken by Bezos.'
'The horndog e-commerce mogul even sent Sanchez a below-the-belt selfie — otherwise colloquially known as a 'd*ck pic' — in an unsparing close-up that's too explicit to describe in detail,' the tabloid published at the time.
The National Enquirer had claimed that its editors 'decided not to publish the image or details about it out of respect to the billionaire's privacy.' Bezos and his longtime wife McKenzie Scott had just announced their divorce.
Jeff Bezos pushed an unfounded theory that Saudi Arabia was behind the revelation of his affair with Lauren Sanchez after he and his wife McKenzie Scott announced their divorce
Bezos, 57, revealed in 2019 that he was the victim of an unsuccessful extortion attempt by the National Enquirer which published intimate text messages between him and Sanchez
The National Enquirer reportedly received nine photos from Sanchez' brother in a deal worth $200,000
After the National Enquirer published its 'expose,' Bezos made a post to Medium in which he suggested that Saudi Arabia was behind the tabloid's scoop. Bezos' private investigator Gavin de Becker furthered those claims in a Daily Beast article.
'Our investigators and several experts concluded with high confidence that the Saudis had access to Bezos' phone and gained private information. As of today, it is unclear to what degree, if any, AMI was aware of the details,' de Becker wrote.
The revelations were made in a new book Amazon Unbound by Brad Stone
American Media Inc., which owned the National Enquirer at the time, later told the Washington Post - which is owned by Bezos - that Michael Sanchez, Lauren's brother, was its 'sole source for information about the extramarital affair.'
Author Brad Stone has revealed in his new book Amazon Unbound: Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire that the purported selfie the Enquirer claimed it had of Bezos' penis was not even real and was taken by Michael Sanchez from a website for gay escorts, according to the New York Post, which reviewed a copy of the book.
Stone revealed that the Enquirer never received the penis photo and was instead shown a photo of another man's genitalia that Sanchez had taken from the website Rent.men. However, Stone claimed that the Bezos photo was shown to the National Enquirer in a meeting with reporter Andrea Simpson during on November 21, 2018.
The book also claimed that there was no 'conclusive evidence' to back up Bezos' allegations that Saudi Arabia had been in cahoots with the National Enquirer.
'[Michael Sanchez] later told FBI investigators for the Southern District of New York that he never actually had an explicit photograph of Bezos in his possession,' Stone wrote in the book.
Stone claims Michael Sanchez did sell the Enquirer nine photos he allegedly received from his sister, who 'frequently forwarded' Bezos' text messages to him, for around $200,000, according to the book. The penis picture was not one of them.
'The sibling relationship was, to put it mildly, unusual,' Stone writes.
The author wrote that Bezos 'took the already muddled question of how the paper obtained his private text messages and photographs and confused it further.'
Stone particularly called out parts of Bezos' Medium post in which he said the origin of the National Enquirer story was 'still to be better understood' and that 'the Saudi angle seems to hit a particular nerve' with the Trump-friendly American Media Inc.
Bezos pushed his unfounded theory in a post made to Medium
Bezos is pictured with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman. The Saudi Arabian leader was reportedly upset about the Washington Post's coverage of the death of Jamal Khashoggi
Mother Jones noted that, at the time, the Washington Post's 'relentless coverage' of the grisly death of its columnist, Jamal Khashoggi, allegedly enraged Saudi crown prince Mohammad Bin Salman, who allegedly ordered Khashoggi's murder.
The outlet reported in January 2020 that the United Nations had called for an 'immediate investigation' of the alleged hacking of Bezos's iPhone.
The United Nations reportedly cited forensic evidence showing that a WhatsApp account linked to MBS 'infected the billionaire's phone while the two were chatting in May 2018,' according to The Guardian.
'This analysis found it 'highly probable' that the intrusion into the phone was triggered by an infected video file sent from the account of the Saudi heir to Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post,' The Guardian reported.
Stone wrote in the new book that Bezos' Saudi Arabia allegations amounted to 'only a fog of overlapping events, weak ties between disparate figures and more strange coincidences.'
'For Bezos and his advisors, though, who were still trying to positively spin the embarrassing events surrounding his divorce, such a cloud of uncertainty was at the very least distracting from the more unsavory and complicated truth,' he wrote.
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