Donald Trump Was ‘Directly Involved’ In National Enquirer Plot To Blackmail Jeff Bezos, Expert Claims
Donald Trump was “directly involved” in a plot by American Media Inc. (AMI) to blackmail Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, an expert on the company claims.
Scott Galloway, a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business and an expert on Amazon, said he believes there was coordination between Trump and American Media Inc. — the parent company of the National Enquirer— in the company’s threats to expose nude images of Bezos that were stolen from his cell phone. Bezos exposed the threatening messages from AMI in a column for Medium, saying that AMI was threatening him, and demanded that the Washington Post — which Bezos also owns — back off its investigation of the connection between AMI and the Trump campaign.
Galloway said he believes Trump’s silence on the matter is a major clue that the president is involved.
“A key tell among law enforcement officials is when someone is driving 45 miles an hour in the fast lane, that they’re hiding something,” Galloway said in his appearance, via Raw Story. “The president’s silence on this is eerie.”
“He tweeted about Bezos calling him ‘Bozo’ January 4th — but this is someone who never misses an opportunity to mock someone he perceives as an adversary via Twitter and he hasn’t said anything and I think that’s — that’s a tell here.”
Galloway added that both Trump and AMI are “acting like guilty parties right now.” He did not have any direct evidence to implicate Trump in the plot, but noted that he has acted in a similar way in the past.
There have been previous allegations of cooperation between Trump and the famous tabloid. Donald Trump has been longtime friends with David Pecker, the chief executive of AMI, and the company reportedly used the National Enquirer to acquire damaging stories about Trump so they could be squashed. The company also entered into a cooperation agreement with federal prosecutors on charges that Trump and former lawyer Michael Cohen committed felony campaign finance violations, by concealing hush money payment to two women who said they had affairs with Trump shortly after the birth of his youngest son.
Trump ‘directly involved’ in alleged blackmail scheme against Jeff Bezos: Amazon experthttps://t.co/5EhequAl77
— Raw Story (@RawStory) February 9, 2019
There could be more trouble ahead for David Pecker — and potentially for Donald Trump if he is found to be involved. The New York Post’s Page Six noted that Pecker could be in violation of the federal agreement by breaking the law. Federal investigators are looking into the allegations that the National Enquirer‘s parent company is blackmailing Jeff Bezos, the report noted.
