My Hardball appearance was bumped due to the breaking story that the National Enquirer has dick pics of the founder of Amazon dot com
is a sentence I never thought I’d be uttering as a historian.
— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) February 8, 2019
It’s the mixture of high crimes & low comedy (cf: Watergate’s ‘plumbers’, or Spiro Agnew’s literal envelopes of graft money) that guarantee a scandal that will run and run!
Jeff Bezos just broke the National Enquirer’s business model.
— Karen Tumulty (@ktumulty) February 7, 2019
“Alexa, take revenge.”
— James O'Malley (@Psythor) February 7, 2019
The news is also that Pecker, who has had relationships with both Trump and Jared Kushner, is having this sent as he is also a witness receiving immunity in a federal case. https://t.co/CN3il8KJsj
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) February 8, 2019
Washington Posts @RoigFranzia says Bezos' team thinks it's possible that the text leaks were politically motivated and that a "government entity" accessed the Bezos texts and hoo boy that's certainly something pic.twitter.com/MQuzNFbCed
— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) February 8, 2019
As my wife pointed out, Trump is in the middle of a campaign — Trump 2020 up and running. That makes AMI's focus on getting Bezos to say "no political motive" clear. If AMI did have a political motive last month, it would be an illegal campaign contribution https://t.co/KhdTBfc39k
— David Burbach (@dburbach) February 8, 2019
I and at least one other prominent journalist involved in breaking stories about the National Enquirer’s arrangement with Trump fielded similar “stop digging or we’ll ruin you” blackmail efforts from AMI. (I did not engage as I don’t cut deals with subjects of ongoing reporting.) https://t.co/kHQdWIkVjV
— Ronan Farrow (@RonanFarrow) February 8, 2019
Bezos Nix Dick Pix.
It's fun being in 5th grade again.— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) February 8, 2019
You're indicating that the National Enquirer, Bezos mortal enemy, hosts their site at Amazon Web Services?
— Eric Shawn (@EricShawn1) February 8, 2019
Real talk for a minute: Will HBO or Netflix have enough money for the 200 episode mini-series that will be required to explain what happened in the late teens of 21st century America. https://t.co/eE30sluUH6
— Scott Tranter (@stranter) February 8, 2019
Probably not, but Amazon will.
— Todd Reid (@ToddTReid) February 8, 2019
They can use the money Bezos extracts from David Pecker!
Arrested Developers.
— John Canning (@jbc204) February 8, 2019
Villago Delenda Est
Pecker deserves every last joke made about him by 11 year olds.
He’s irredeemable slime.
Mary G
This timeline is entirely too weird.
akryan
I just can’t anymore. I need to escape to one of the bubble universes where none of this is happening.
mrmoshpotato
@akryan: You found the alternate timeline where Hillary was inaugurated on 1/20/17?
My Side of Town
Does this mean that the mf45 campaign is colluding with the National Enquirer to extort Amazon?
Aleta
Via ABL:
Aleta
From AL’s link
Aleta
12.14.18 By Asawin Suebsaeng, Maxwell Tani, Lloyd Grove
Jared Kushner Replaced Michael Cohen as Trump’s National Enquirer Connection
The president’s son-in-law grew tight with David Pecker during the early months of the administration.
Interesting article now. Including Kushner’s way of putting things out to look like like it is reporting. “During the early months of the Trump era, Kushner performed the task admirably, discussing with Pecker various issues over the phone, including everything from international relations to media gossip, according to four sources familiar with the situation. “
Aleta
@Aleta:
It seems as though (I don’t really know) Kurson he did a lot work for the campaign in helping the stories from Wikileaks get a start in the Observer. (A story somewhere quoted writers there who spoke of Kurson’s strange maybe secretive interferences with certain stories.) Kushner tried to give Kurson a vague title of a job at the WH last year, but the FBI refused.
I guess everything sounds like a cover up to me now, which is a disorder caused by lying immoral Republicans.
Martin
@Aleta: Additionally, Lauren Sanchez is a California resident, and we have laws against sextortion:
The pictures as described in the email to Bezos fall under this bill. Even if the extortion was unsuccessful it would be a crime, and I can’t imagine in this case that it wouldn’t be a felony.
Viva BrisVegas
As a distraction from Bezos dick pics, the story of a cat named Fluffy.
Apparently, and I have no idea if this is even possible, Fluffy of Kalispell Montana was frozen solid during the recent cold snap, found in the snow then taken to a vet and thawed out.
All seems well. Good on Fluffy.
Amir Khalid
@Viva BrisVegas:
That is one cool cat.
(Sorry.)
André Alessi
David Pecker picked a peck of pickled dick pics.
Ian R
@Martin: A felony, and also a violation of AMI’s non-prosecution agreement with SDNY. Pecker tried to sextort the wrong billionaire.
mrmoshpotato
@André Alessi:
And got punched in the pecker for being such a pile of poo.
OzarkHillbilly
Dunning has just been thoroughly Krugered.
mrmoshpotato
@OzarkHillbilly: Murdered in a dream?
Anne Laurie
@Viva BrisVegas:
As you know from reading the story, not actually “frozen solid”, just ice-coated & very very chilled. Every medical drama has at least one episode where someone who’s been ‘frozen’ (fallen through the ice, stranded in the snow) is carefully-yet-dramatically revived… and those stories are actually fact-based. Most winters here in New England, we get at least a few stories about human victims under similar circumstances — so often, in fact, that people can be unrealistically disappointed when the ‘popsicle lazarus’ effect doesn’t work. (A small child might be revived after 15 minutes in a sub-frozen river, but a middle-aged drunk who gets trapped underwater for two hours when he drives his pickup across a not-frozen-enough pond to get to his ice-fishing cabin, not hardly.)
Patricia Kayden
The shoes keep dropping. But I’m waiting to hear Sarah Huckabee Sanders inform us in a condescending tone that this has nothing to do with Trump. Lol
Viva BrisVegas
@Anne Laurie:
I’ll take your word for it as it makes more sense, but this was in the story:
“”She was frozen,” said executive director of the Animal Clinic of Kalispell Andrea Dutter. Her body temperature was below what the clinic’s thermometers could read, minus 32 degrees. ”
I suppose one should always be skeptical.
Anne Laurie
@Viva BrisVegas: Ah, I made the mistake of assuming we were both reading the original Washington Post story:
Looks like somebody misread the fahrenheit-to-centigrade conversion factor!
satby
@Viva BrisVegas: @Anne Laurie: our rescue currently has two kittens fostered that came into animal control with one of them that cold. The sibling was a little warmer and trying to keep her brother alive. They’re both very young and now are doing fine and getting socialized for future adoption.
ET
I was reading a Bloomberg piece on this development and some hedge fund owns like 80% of Ami. Also some big time hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman is also an investor. Wondering how they feel about their investment now.
Bruce K
Okay, so there’s some consensus that blackmailing Bezos is the real-world equivalent of blackmailing a Bond villain (over at LGM, someone commented that Bezos just needs a monocle and a Persian cat).
Then it occurred to me: which Bond villains does Bezos embody?
Elliot Carver from Tomorrow Never Dies is the gimme (newspaper owner). You’ve also got Hugo Drax of Moonraker (owns his own space program). Maybe Max Zorin from A View to a Kill? Who else? How many Bond villains did Pecker just piss off?
Robert Sneddon
@Bruce K:
Doesn’t have to be Persian — he could use any long-haired cat and override the colour to #ffffff in the CSS.
CliosFanboy
@Bruce K:
Lucius Fox : [to Reese] Let me get this straight, you think that your client, one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world, is secretly a vigilante, who spends his nights beating criminals to a pulp with his bare hands, and your plan is to blackmail this person?
[Reese’s face falls and Fox smiles]
Lucius Fox : Good luck.
Ken
@mrmoshpotato:
No, it’s the one where the remnants of humanity are being hunted down and enslaved by robots. But it’s still better than this one.
mere mortal
I’m not generally the sort that criticizes editorial decisions, but seriously, how is that Ronan Farrow tweet not above the fold?
aretino
Aside from the criminal liability, surely AMI and its execs have massive civil exposure in light of the Gawker case. And the damages … well, the revelations credibly cost the world’s richest man half of his fortune.
I will be shocked if the National Enquirer is still in business at the end of next year.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Bruce K: Physically he most resembles an Ernst Blofeld with muscle from You Only Live Twice. That’s the one with the bald cat stroking guy. Played by Donald Pleasance…imitated by Mike Meyers as Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers movies.
The Pale Scot
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH………………………
Fer sure some boffin that works at AWS is pleading to let off the chain just this once
The Pale Scot
@André Alessi: pickled penis pics.
Raoul
@ET: I suppose I might wonder what the hedgers might do, but I doubt they feel much of anything.
Maybe a tiny prick of anxiety. But really, the moral cavity skimming that kind of money creates is devastating.
JGabriel
@akryan:
The other universes are all laughing at ours.
JGabriel
@André Alessi:
Or, just a suggestion: David Pecker picked a peck of pickled pecker pics.
JGabriel
@Anne Laurie: Actually, 32C = 90F. So it looks more like SMH mistook a grammatical dash for a mathematical minus sign.
different-church-lady
Entirely accidentally, Bezos has done more good for humanity with this than Zuckerberg will ever do in his lifetime.
drdavechemist
@Anne Laurie: Not only did they not do a conversion, they apparently interpreted a hyphen as a negative sign!
Cathie from Canada
@Anne Laurie: Actually there was a case in Saskatchewan in 1994 where a 2-year-old followed her dad outside when he left for work on a -20 below morning and then got locked out of the house. She was basically frozen when she was found two hours later but was successfully revived and has gone on to live a normal life.