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In his attempt to preempt the National Enquirer’s scoop with a blog post of his own, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos had mentioned links between Saudi Arabia in his allegations of “blackmail and extortion” against the tabloid.
But an interview on Sunday reveals yet another possible source of the leaked texts – his mistress Lauren Sanchez’s pro-Trump brother.
On Sunday, The Daily Beast ran a story claiming that it was told by multiple sources inside American Media Inc. (AMI), the parent company of the National Enquirer, that Michael Sanchez, the brother of Bezos lover, and a Trumpworld associate, gave the intimate texts to the tabloid.
In an interview on Sunday morning with ABC, an attorney for AMI gave strong hints that seem to indicate Sanchez’s role in leaking the texts to the National Enquirer.
“The story was given to the National Enquirer by a reliable source that had given information to the National Enquirer for seven years prior to this story,” AMI’s attorney Elkan Abramowitz told George Stephanopoulos of ABC News during the interview. “It was a source that was well known to both Mr. Bezos and Ms. Sanchez.”
Stephanopoulos then asked the attorney if Sanchez brother was the source.
“I can’t discuss who the source was. It’s confidential within AMI,” Abramowitz replied.
In an interview with CBS on Sunday, Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister for foreign affairs Adel Al-Jubeir told the news agency that the Kingdom had no involvement with the leaking of the intimate text messages of Jeff Bezos to the National Enquirer.
Last week, Bezos had mentioned links between Saudi Arabia and the publisher of the National Enquirer, AMI.
Bezos, who owns the Washington Post, also referenced the story of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post Journalist who was murdered in the Istanbul Saudi consulate last October.
“The Post’s essential and unrelenting coverage of the murder of its columnist Jamal Khashoggi is undoubtedly unpopular in certain circles,” Bezos wrote in his blog, adding, “the Saudi angle seems to hit a particularly sensitive nerve.”
“This sounds to me like a soap opera,” said Al-Jubeir. “This is something between the two parties. We have nothing to do with it.”
A few hours before the story broke on The Daily Beast identifying Michael Sanchez as the possible source of the leaked texts, he was interviewed on Fox News’ MediaBuzz” on Sunday.
In the interview, Sanchez criticized Bezos’s attempt at preempting the National Enquirer scoop about the affair by releasing his own statement on his blog ahead of the revelation appearing in print.
Sanchez says he had personally been negotiating with AMI to soften the story about the affair when Bezos’s longtime security advisor, Gavin de Becker, “launched World War III against AMI” by advising Bezos to release the blog post.
“Everything that Gavin has advised Jeff to do has only amplified the magnitude of the scandal,” said Sanchez during the interview.
