The National Enquirer paid the brother of Jeff Bezos’ mistress $200,000 for the racy text messages and other dirt used in their story that sunk the billionaire’s marriage, a report said.
The tabloid paid the money to Michael Sanchez, the brother of Bezos mistress Lauren Sanchez, with an upfront contract in exchange for the text messages used in an 11-page spread about their affair that was published in January, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Michael Sanchez, who has been a longtime source for the Enquirer, began speaking to the tabloid about Bezos and his sister’s relationship last fall, according to the report. Sanchez and the Enquirer finalized the deal on Oct. 26.
The Enquirer’s lawyer, Cameron Stracher, included an upfront payment in the contract to prove the story would not be a “catch and kill” operation similar to the ones it had carried out on behalf of President Trump during the 2016 presidential election, the newspaper reported.
In the bombshell report, the Enquirer included a number of text exchanges between Bezos and Lauren Sanchez.
“I love you, alive girl. I will show you with my body, and my lips and my eyes, very soon,” Bezos wrote to Sanchez in an April 2018 text, according to the Enquirer.
In response to the report, Bezos, using his longtime security consultant, launched an investigation into how the tabloid obtained the personal information.
Incensed at the investigation into the Enquirer, the CEO, David Pecker, ordered top editor Dylan Howard to send an email to Bezos, threatening to publish nude selfies of Bezos if he did not end the probe.
Bezos came clean with a post on the site Medium titled “No thank you, Mr. Pecker,” in which he exposed the attempted shakedown by the tabloid.
“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,” Bezos wrote in the post.