10 ms·

I’m not American, and maybe I just don’t know enough about your legal system or this Bezos thing, but I just can’t wrap my head around it. How could he not? Ho

by jaabe 8y ago

I’m not American, and maybe I just don’t know enough about your legal system or this Bezos thing, but I just can’t wrap my head around it. How could he not? How can attempted blackmail with someones private, and, stolen photos not be illegal?

TheCondor 8y ago
Blackmail is a subterfuge here. They were negotiating, supposedly in good faith, it’s the terms that Bezos couldn’t swallow. They wanted him to stop his investigation and I don’t think that’s going to happen. He’s going to find out where the leak came from and there may very well be crimes involved with that.
- tw04 8y ago
  I'm not sure in what world you can call this negotiation. It's literally the definition of blackmail/extortion in New York. https://statelaws.findlaw.com/new-york-law/new-york-extortion-laws.html https://statelaws.findlaw.com/new-york-law/new-york-extortio...
  - pfortuny 8y ago
    And in any other place. A negotiation is for the good of both parties. Blackmail is just to stop one harming the other (and likely from a powerful standpoint).
  - rjf72 8y ago
    I think this is one of the parts in law where you very much would need a specialized lawyer to begin to even grasp the law. There are too many confounding issues here. For instance I expect the paper will have some argument in the fact that publishing these sort of things is part of their regular work and benefits the 'public good'. How does this interact with the laws and what precedent has been set? If you take these laws at completely face value many things such as out of court monetary settlements would be bordering on illegal which is certainly not the case.
    - tw04 8y ago
      If publishing them is in the public good, then publish it. The second you reach out to the subject and threaten to publish unless they lie for you, that defense falls apart.
    - gamblor956 8y ago
      What matters is whether AMI actually has the undisputed right to publish them, i.e., such as if the pictures are a clear matter of the public interest. If, however, AMI's actions could be tortious (or criminal), then threatening to publish can be blackmail depending on what they specifically threaten and the quid pro quo. If AMI's actions would be tortious, then threatening to publish is blackmail regardless of what they specifically threaten or the quid pro quo.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  Blackmail and extortion inherently always present as negotiation; it's what is offered and asked for in the negotiation, and the context around it, that makes the offense.
  - travmatt 8y ago
    Bezos isn’t the only person they were ‘negotiating’ with, the investigative journalist Ronan Farrow maintains that he and another journalist were similarly approached by AMI with promises to not publish stories about them if they agreed to stop reporting on trump. https://www.thehill.com/homenews/media/429128-farrow-national-enquirer-company-tried-to-blackmail-me-on-trump-reporting https://www.thehill.com/homenews/media/429128-farrow-nationa...
api 8y ago
It could be a crime, but if not it is incredibly civilly actionable. Since Bezos came out other less powerful people have made similar claims. Personally I hope he bankrupts that trash rag.
- andromedavision 8y ago
  What's your opinion on the Gawker case? Did they deserve what happened?
  - api 8y ago
    Yes. People have issues with it because of Thiel's far right politics, but keep in mind what Gawker did. Publishing a sex tape is a sex crime, or damn close. Imagine if Hogan were a woman and its obvious. Imagine if they published a sex tape of an actress or outed a community activist in a conservative area as gay. In some cases outing people as gay can put them in danger. BTW I also think it was fine for Alex Jones to get deplatformed and sued for encouraging people to harass school shooting victims. Free speech doesn't mean libel, slander, blackmail, targeted harassment, sex abuse, etc. won't get you sued. What is alleged with the National Enquirer here is much worse. It looks a lot like they are acting as blackmail enforcers for Trump and/or the Saudis. Like I said others are now coming forward.
    - P_I_Staker 8y ago
      > Imagine if they published a sex tape of an actress I'm pretty sure this has been done. Normally, they get out in front of it, so they can at least cash in. Personally, I'm not thrilled with rich people being able to shut down publications that they don't like. That said, I don't know how to feel about the Gawker case. It's easy not to care, when the victim is so unsympathetic.
      - gamblor956 8y ago
        While a number of F-list celebrities like Paris Hilton deliberately released their sex tapes, the sex tapes of actresses and other celebrities released without their consent generally resulted in pretty heft settlements for the women, and in a few cases prison sentences for the distributors. (See e.g., Erin Andrews.)
21 8y ago
Read the emails carefully, and remember they were written by lawyers. It didn't seem to reach the level of criminal blackmail to me. Experts quoted in the article agree. If they do however publish the picture everyone talks about, I'm pretty sure they will be destroyed just like Gawker was in the Hulk Hogan case.
- xfitm3 8y ago
  I think it’s murky enough to keep the enquirer in court for a long time.
- jaabe 8y ago
  This is exactly what I don’t get though, how can you get away with extortion by writing it in lawyer tongue?
  - 21 8y ago
    The article explains why, because sometimes this kind of thing is needed and good: > This reasoning is why, for example, a lawyer can send someone a letter saying their client will agree to settle a lawsuit if certain terms are met.
  - mannykannot 8y ago
    More discussion on that, as well as on the possible implications for the publisher's immunity deal with respect to the matter of Karen McDougal and Donald Trump (if it was a crime, that deal is void), can be found here: https://www.npr.org/2019/02/08/692823620/what-bezos-allegations-could-mean-for-american-media-s-immunity-deal https://www.npr.org/2019/02/08/692823620/what-bezos-allegati...
  - P_I_Staker 8y ago
    Lawyers have a responsibility to act ethically. You aren't necessarily going to get into trouble for what they do, if you're only following their instructions. This is shaky legal ground and a rarely successful defense that came up with all the Tump stuff. Here it seems it might be appropriate though. "Advice of counsel defense", a Quote from Jens David Ohlin, a vice dean at Cornell Law School (taken from business insider article) > The advice-of-counsel defense "doesn't apply if both the lawyer and the client are on the same page that what they are doing is illegal in some way," Ohlin said. "According to Cohen, both he and Trump understood that they were paying hush money to influence an election, and then covered it up to hide the illegality." However, in this case, did both parties know that something illegal was going on? That's more of a stretch here. If I met with a lawyer and said "lets illegally commit extortion", obviously that's illegal. If my attorney just does it, as a part of an ongoing legal dispute, it's far less clear (lots of legal disputes can seem like extortion; eg. settle with us now or you'll have to pay even more to defend, is a standard strategy). That lack of clarity could be plenty of motivation to dissuade prosecutors from bringing charges; especially if they're on good terms with the party and happily using them in an ongoing investigation.
drcode 8y ago
I think it comes down to the fact that there has to be a way for lawyers to discuss the hypothetical terms of a settlement... Those kinds of discussions are really hard to criminalize, and AMI takes advantage of that fact in their extortions.
- childintime 8y ago
  Even patent trolls, a well-known example of lawyer threats, don't go as far as AMI did.
- bad_user 8y ago
  I am not a lawyer, or a US citizen, however I thought settlements are about discussing terms to avoid a confrontation in a court of law. Example: accept the terms or we’ll submit these pictures as evidence. I can’t see how this isn’t illegal and literally blackmail. They are threatening him to make some pictures public, in order to embarrass him and to damage his marriage, and not in the context of a lawsuit, but in a newspaper. And if these threats are legal, then the legal system is broken.
  - ksherlock 8y ago
    Do this or I will (do something illegal)" is not ok. "Do this or I will (do something I have a legal right to do)" is ok. Perhaps unseemly, but contract law is based on people agreeing to do things or not do things. AMI seems to believe publishing JB's dick pics is legal for journalistic reasons. Maybe he uses an iPhone instead of a Fire Phone? That's something people should know!
  - gamblor956 8y ago
    Example: accept the terms or we’ll submit these pictures as evidence. For your specific hypothetical, it depends. First, are those pictures relevant to the litigation between the parties? Second, would the threatening party be allowed to submit those pictures as evidence regardless of what the victim decided? If the answer to both of those is yes, then threatening to introduce the pictures as evidence in court would generally not be blackmail. However, AMI and Bezos aren't currently engaged in litigation since no lawsuit has yet been filed. The legal system is not yet involved in this matter, so your criticism of the legal system as it applies in your comment is unfounded. And if these threats are legal, then the legal system is broken. This comes down to the contents of the pictures themselves. If they are private pictures of himself or his GF, then generally the burden is on AMI to show that the pictures are somehow relevant to the public interest. This is an extremely high bar for them to clear, since they need to show that the nude photos are (1) relevant to the public interest in Bezos' divorce, and (2) that the public's interest in seeing the photos overrides Bezos' and Sanchez's interests in keeping their private photos private. (Note: this is just a very simplified layman's overview. An in-depth discussion would be the length of a law-review article.)
P_I_Staker 8y ago
The article lists a few ways this might not be considered blackmail. Mainly, when you negotiate a legal matter that is not extortion, even though it often seems as such. The fact that some of the emails come from a lawyer could shield AMI from liability, even if what the lawyer did was unethical. I'm not completely clear on this point, of course you can't let your lawyer do anything, and wash your hands of it, but they're the ones with the professional obligation to act ethically (one of many reasons to retain lawyers). Finally, there might be a free speech case. More importantly, the above reasons might make prosecutors reluctant to bring charges or toss out their immunity deal. A party can do something probably illegal in the USA, and prosecutors may be unwilling to bring charges, for a variety of reasons. Who says the photos are stolen by the way? Do we know how they obtained them? It's copyright infringement at a minimum, which is a civil matter, so he can sue for that at least. I'm basing my information on the article, and only posting, because some people will refuse to read it (even though it's quite short).
- bob33212 8y ago
  The possible reasons I have heard are: 1. This has always worked before with other CEOs they have blackmailed. 2. There is something big going on with the Saudis or Trump and if that gets discovered everyone at AMI is going to jail and this was a Hail Mary attempt to avoid that.
  - breatheoften 8y ago
    I think they had to have been lured into it — suppose Bezos allowed them to intercept some fake communications wherein Bezos makes it looks like he’s terrified of losing half his fortune over something related to the scandal and his wife’s leverage — and suppose that he did so to trick them into thinking they have leverage that he is likely to cave to so that they would attack via illegal means ... The fact that they haven’t attacked him at all in the press makes me think that they are shitting bricks and that they really didn’t think he would publicly expose them.
  - joezydeco 8y ago
    I came here to say the same thing. Bezos pointed at the Saudis directly in his Medium post. It probably started with WaPo looking into the Kashoggi murder on their own, but this mystery AMI magazine promoting MBS is another point on the trail. Bezos is probably really close to getting all of AMI indicted on treason charges and that's the value being exchanged in a possible extortion charge.
nabla9 8y ago
If you look at what ex-prosecutors say, many of them think it's clearly enough to bring charges, but it's not clear cut case in the court. The blackmail attempt happened during ongoing negotiations with over potential legal claims against one another. The defense will argue that they were playing hardball and using dirty and distasteful tactics that is still legal. Prosecutors will argue that this goes far beyond it. It's weird that Pecker and the company lawyers choose take the risk. They are in no-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors under conditions that the firm can't do any crimes in next two years or the deal is off.
- ncallaway 8y ago
  > ... many of them think it's clearly enough to bring charges, but it's not clear cut case in the court. > They are in no-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors under conditions that the firm can't do any crimes in next two years or the deal is off These two facts are crazy to me, because the prosecution doesn't have to win in court to tear up the deal. The prosecution generally just has to show that they made a determination in good faith that a crime was committed. So there is a _much_ lower bar to tear up the deal if the prosecution thinks something smells criminal. I just don't get why you would possibly risk the immunity deal for this. The reward doesn't seem worth the risk at all.
  - jaxn 8y ago
    Maybe they are in the habit of doing things like this and getting away with it?
  - rubyfan 8y ago
    That’s my guess why they were blackmailing in the first place. He already knew they were illegally obtained and they knew that would blow their deal with the government. They weren’t taking any additional risk, more like playing a risky game they thought they could win. Maybe they thought the richest married man in the world wouldn’t want to deal with the embarrassment of having his dirty laundry shared with the world. Seems like he called their bluff.
  - awakeasleep 8y ago
diogenescynic 8y ago
AMI used legal negotiations to give their blackmail/extortion attempt the veneer of credibility. When you look at it though, it’s definitrly extortion. AMI is saying they will hurt Bezos, if Bezos doesn’t do something to AMI’s benefit. That is quid quo pro right there. What’s even more strange is that AMI’s lawyer had worked at Amazon for 8 years. You’d think that lawyer would have had some familiarity with Bezos and known not to mess with him, but I guess not.

by jaabe 8y ago

TheCondor 8y ago

Blackmail is a subterfuge here. They were negotiating, supposedly in good faith, it’s the terms that Bezos couldn’t swallow. They wanted him to stop his investigation and I don’t think that’s going to happen. He’s going to find out where the leak came from and there may very well be crimes involved with that.

tw04 8y ago
I'm not sure in what world you can call this negotiation. It's literally the definition of blackmail/extortion in New York. https://statelaws.findlaw.com/new-york-law/new-york-extortion-laws.html https://statelaws.findlaw.com/new-york-law/new-york-extortio...
- pfortuny 8y ago
  And in any other place. A negotiation is for the good of both parties. Blackmail is just to stop one harming the other (and likely from a powerful standpoint).
- rjf72 8y ago
  I think this is one of the parts in law where you very much would need a specialized lawyer to begin to even grasp the law. There are too many confounding issues here. For instance I expect the paper will have some argument in the fact that publishing these sort of things is part of their regular work and benefits the 'public good'. How does this interact with the laws and what precedent has been set? If you take these laws at completely face value many things such as out of court monetary settlements would be bordering on illegal which is certainly not the case.
  - tw04 8y ago
    If publishing them is in the public good, then publish it. The second you reach out to the subject and threaten to publish unless they lie for you, that defense falls apart.
  - gamblor956 8y ago
    What matters is whether AMI actually has the undisputed right to publish them, i.e., such as if the pictures are a clear matter of the public interest. If, however, AMI's actions could be tortious (or criminal), then threatening to publish can be blackmail depending on what they specifically threaten and the quid pro quo. If AMI's actions would be tortious, then threatening to publish is blackmail regardless of what they specifically threaten or the quid pro quo.
dragonwriter 8y ago
Blackmail and extortion inherently always present as negotiation; it's what is offered and asked for in the negotiation, and the context around it, that makes the offense.
- travmatt 8y ago
  Bezos isn’t the only person they were ‘negotiating’ with, the investigative journalist Ronan Farrow maintains that he and another journalist were similarly approached by AMI with promises to not publish stories about them if they agreed to stop reporting on trump. https://www.thehill.com/homenews/media/429128-farrow-national-enquirer-company-tried-to-blackmail-me-on-trump-reporting https://www.thehill.com/homenews/media/429128-farrow-nationa...

api 8y ago

It could be a crime, but if not it is incredibly civilly actionable. Since Bezos came out other less powerful people have made similar claims. Personally I hope he bankrupts that trash rag.

andromedavision 8y ago
What's your opinion on the Gawker case? Did they deserve what happened?
- api 8y ago
  Yes. People have issues with it because of Thiel's far right politics, but keep in mind what Gawker did. Publishing a sex tape is a sex crime, or damn close. Imagine if Hogan were a woman and its obvious. Imagine if they published a sex tape of an actress or outed a community activist in a conservative area as gay. In some cases outing people as gay can put them in danger. BTW I also think it was fine for Alex Jones to get deplatformed and sued for encouraging people to harass school shooting victims. Free speech doesn't mean libel, slander, blackmail, targeted harassment, sex abuse, etc. won't get you sued. What is alleged with the National Enquirer here is much worse. It looks a lot like they are acting as blackmail enforcers for Trump and/or the Saudis. Like I said others are now coming forward.
  - P_I_Staker 8y ago
    > Imagine if they published a sex tape of an actress I'm pretty sure this has been done. Normally, they get out in front of it, so they can at least cash in. Personally, I'm not thrilled with rich people being able to shut down publications that they don't like. That said, I don't know how to feel about the Gawker case. It's easy not to care, when the victim is so unsympathetic.
    - gamblor956 8y ago
      While a number of F-list celebrities like Paris Hilton deliberately released their sex tapes, the sex tapes of actresses and other celebrities released without their consent generally resulted in pretty heft settlements for the women, and in a few cases prison sentences for the distributors. (See e.g., Erin Andrews.)

21 8y ago

Read the emails carefully, and remember they were written by lawyers. It didn't seem to reach the level of criminal blackmail to me. Experts quoted in the article agree. If they do however publish the picture everyone talks about, I'm pretty sure they will be destroyed just like Gawker was in the Hulk Hogan case.

xfitm3 8y ago
I think it’s murky enough to keep the enquirer in court for a long time.
jaabe 8y ago
This is exactly what I don’t get though, how can you get away with extortion by writing it in lawyer tongue?
- 21 8y ago
  The article explains why, because sometimes this kind of thing is needed and good: > This reasoning is why, for example, a lawyer can send someone a letter saying their client will agree to settle a lawsuit if certain terms are met.
- mannykannot 8y ago
  More discussion on that, as well as on the possible implications for the publisher's immunity deal with respect to the matter of Karen McDougal and Donald Trump (if it was a crime, that deal is void), can be found here: https://www.npr.org/2019/02/08/692823620/what-bezos-allegations-could-mean-for-american-media-s-immunity-deal https://www.npr.org/2019/02/08/692823620/what-bezos-allegati...
- P_I_Staker 8y ago
  Lawyers have a responsibility to act ethically. You aren't necessarily going to get into trouble for what they do, if you're only following their instructions. This is shaky legal ground and a rarely successful defense that came up with all the Tump stuff. Here it seems it might be appropriate though. "Advice of counsel defense", a Quote from Jens David Ohlin, a vice dean at Cornell Law School (taken from business insider article) > The advice-of-counsel defense "doesn't apply if both the lawyer and the client are on the same page that what they are doing is illegal in some way," Ohlin said. "According to Cohen, both he and Trump understood that they were paying hush money to influence an election, and then covered it up to hide the illegality." However, in this case, did both parties know that something illegal was going on? That's more of a stretch here. If I met with a lawyer and said "lets illegally commit extortion", obviously that's illegal. If my attorney just does it, as a part of an ongoing legal dispute, it's far less clear (lots of legal disputes can seem like extortion; eg. settle with us now or you'll have to pay even more to defend, is a standard strategy). That lack of clarity could be plenty of motivation to dissuade prosecutors from bringing charges; especially if they're on good terms with the party and happily using them in an ongoing investigation.

drcode 8y ago

I think it comes down to the fact that there has to be a way for lawyers to discuss the hypothetical terms of a settlement... Those kinds of discussions are really hard to criminalize, and AMI takes advantage of that fact in their extortions.

childintime 8y ago
Even patent trolls, a well-known example of lawyer threats, don't go as far as AMI did.
bad_user 8y ago
I am not a lawyer, or a US citizen, however I thought settlements are about discussing terms to avoid a confrontation in a court of law. Example: accept the terms or we’ll submit these pictures as evidence. I can’t see how this isn’t illegal and literally blackmail. They are threatening him to make some pictures public, in order to embarrass him and to damage his marriage, and not in the context of a lawsuit, but in a newspaper. And if these threats are legal, then the legal system is broken.
- ksherlock 8y ago
  Do this or I will (do something illegal)" is not ok. "Do this or I will (do something I have a legal right to do)" is ok. Perhaps unseemly, but contract law is based on people agreeing to do things or not do things. AMI seems to believe publishing JB's dick pics is legal for journalistic reasons. Maybe he uses an iPhone instead of a Fire Phone? That's something people should know!
- gamblor956 8y ago
  Example: accept the terms or we’ll submit these pictures as evidence. For your specific hypothetical, it depends. First, are those pictures relevant to the litigation between the parties? Second, would the threatening party be allowed to submit those pictures as evidence regardless of what the victim decided? If the answer to both of those is yes, then threatening to introduce the pictures as evidence in court would generally not be blackmail. However, AMI and Bezos aren't currently engaged in litigation since no lawsuit has yet been filed. The legal system is not yet involved in this matter, so your criticism of the legal system as it applies in your comment is unfounded. And if these threats are legal, then the legal system is broken. This comes down to the contents of the pictures themselves. If they are private pictures of himself or his GF, then generally the burden is on AMI to show that the pictures are somehow relevant to the public interest. This is an extremely high bar for them to clear, since they need to show that the nude photos are (1) relevant to the public interest in Bezos' divorce, and (2) that the public's interest in seeing the photos overrides Bezos' and Sanchez's interests in keeping their private photos private. (Note: this is just a very simplified layman's overview. An in-depth discussion would be the length of a law-review article.)

P_I_Staker 8y ago

The article lists a few ways this might not be considered blackmail. Mainly, when you negotiate a legal matter that is not extortion, even though it often seems as such. The fact that some of the emails come from a lawyer could shield AMI from liability, even if what the lawyer did was unethical. I'm not completely clear on this point, of course you can't let your lawyer do anything, and wash your hands of it, but they're the ones with the professional obligation to act ethically (one of many reasons to retain lawyers). Finally, there might be a free speech case. More importantly, the above reasons might make prosecutors reluctant to bring charges or toss out their immunity deal. A party can do something probably illegal in the USA, and prosecutors may be unwilling to bring charges, for a variety of reasons. Who says the photos are stolen by the way? Do we know how they obtained them? It's copyright infringement at a minimum, which is a civil matter, so he can sue for that at least. I'm basing my information on the article, and only posting, because some people will refuse to read it (even though it's quite short).

bob33212 8y ago
The possible reasons I have heard are: 1. This has always worked before with other CEOs they have blackmailed. 2. There is something big going on with the Saudis or Trump and if that gets discovered everyone at AMI is going to jail and this was a Hail Mary attempt to avoid that.
- breatheoften 8y ago
  I think they had to have been lured into it — suppose Bezos allowed them to intercept some fake communications wherein Bezos makes it looks like he’s terrified of losing half his fortune over something related to the scandal and his wife’s leverage — and suppose that he did so to trick them into thinking they have leverage that he is likely to cave to so that they would attack via illegal means ... The fact that they haven’t attacked him at all in the press makes me think that they are shitting bricks and that they really didn’t think he would publicly expose them.
- joezydeco 8y ago
  I came here to say the same thing. Bezos pointed at the Saudis directly in his Medium post. It probably started with WaPo looking into the Kashoggi murder on their own, but this mystery AMI magazine promoting MBS is another point on the trail. Bezos is probably really close to getting all of AMI indicted on treason charges and that's the value being exchanged in a possible extortion charge.

nabla9 8y ago

If you look at what ex-prosecutors say, many of them think it's clearly enough to bring charges, but it's not clear cut case in the court. The blackmail attempt happened during ongoing negotiations with over potential legal claims against one another. The defense will argue that they were playing hardball and using dirty and distasteful tactics that is still legal. Prosecutors will argue that this goes far beyond it. It's weird that Pecker and the company lawyers choose take the risk. They are in no-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors under conditions that the firm can't do any crimes in next two years or the deal is off.

ncallaway 8y ago
> ... many of them think it's clearly enough to bring charges, but it's not clear cut case in the court. > They are in no-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors under conditions that the firm can't do any crimes in next two years or the deal is off These two facts are crazy to me, because the prosecution doesn't have to win in court to tear up the deal. The prosecution generally just has to show that they made a determination in good faith that a crime was committed. So there is a _much_ lower bar to tear up the deal if the prosecution thinks something smells criminal. I just don't get why you would possibly risk the immunity deal for this. The reward doesn't seem worth the risk at all.
- jaxn 8y ago
  Maybe they are in the habit of doing things like this and getting away with it?
- rubyfan 8y ago
  That’s my guess why they were blackmailing in the first place. He already knew they were illegally obtained and they knew that would blow their deal with the government. They weren’t taking any additional risk, more like playing a risky game they thought they could win. Maybe they thought the richest married man in the world wouldn’t want to deal with the embarrassment of having his dirty laundry shared with the world. Seems like he called their bluff.
- awakeasleep 8y ago

diogenescynic 8y ago

AMI used legal negotiations to give their blackmail/extortion attempt the veneer of credibility. When you look at it though, it’s definitrly extortion. AMI is saying they will hurt Bezos, if Bezos doesn’t do something to AMI’s benefit. That is quid quo pro right there. What’s even more strange is that AMI’s lawyer had worked at Amazon for 8 years. You’d think that lawyer would have had some familiarity with Bezos and known not to mess with him, but I guess not.