Speaker 1: January nine, two nine, at precisely six oh seven in
Speaker 1: the morning Pacific time, was a massive turning point in
Speaker 1: the life of Jeff Bezos. It's the divorce that has
Speaker 1: the tech world buzz. The world's richest man, Amazon CEO
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos announcing he and his wife Mackenzie are splitting
Speaker 1: up after twenty five years. Bezos kicked all of this
Speaker 1: off by sending a tweet, the couple releasing a joint
Speaker 1: statement Wednesday, reading, in part, after a long period of
Speaker 1: loving exploration and trial separation, we have decided to divorce
Speaker 1: and continue our shared lives as friends. If we had
Speaker 1: known we would separate after twenty five years, we would
Speaker 1: do it again. This was shocking news to their colleagues, acquaintances,
Speaker 1: even casual friends. Most people had no reason to believe
Speaker 1: the relationship was strained. Of course, couples get divorced all
Speaker 1: the time. It's what happened next to change the course
Speaker 1: of the Amazon story. Later that day, a usepaper tabloid
Speaker 1: reported that Bezos was seeing another woman. What happens when
Speaker 1: one of the richest men in the world decides to
Speaker 1: divorce his wife and then starts dating the wife of
Speaker 1: one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. So wait,
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos had a girlfriend. Bezos had presented a picture
Speaker 1: of an amicable separation in his tweet, but within just
Speaker 1: a few hours reports in the news media, we're complicating
Speaker 1: his tidy narratives. Not long after Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos
Speaker 1: and his wife Mackenzie announced they were divorcing after twenty
Speaker 1: five years of marriage, reports surface that Bezos had been
Speaker 1: dating TV personality Laurence Sanchez. She's now separated from her
Speaker 1: husband Patrick Whitesell. He's the co CEO of the Hollywood
Speaker 1: agency w M E and reportedly introduced Bezos to his wife.
Speaker 1: All three were photographed together at an Amazon party. Soon
Speaker 1: it became clear that the infamous supermarket tabloid, The National
Speaker 1: Inquirer was ready to publish the entire story it had
Speaker 1: the couple's private romantic text messages. The media had a
Speaker 1: field day on the real A daytime talk show host
Speaker 1: Lonnie Love lampoon the text messages with a dramatic reading,
Speaker 1: you know what I want. I want to get a
Speaker 1: little drunk with you tonight. Not falling down, no, just
Speaker 1: a little drunk. I want to talk to you and
Speaker 1: plan with you. Listen and laugh. I basically want to
Speaker 1: be with you when I want to fall asleep with
Speaker 1: you and wake up tomorrow, read the paper with you,
Speaker 1: and have coffee with you. Yes, me to say and sing.
Speaker 1: And of course even the President of the United States
Speaker 1: joined the pylon. Well, I wish your luck. I wish
Speaker 1: your luck. It's gonna be a beauty. Here was the
Speaker 1: world's then wealthiest man, a business icon, having an adulterous relationship,
Speaker 1: and even more shocking getting busted by a sleazy tabloid
Speaker 1: inside Amazon employees and executives where flabbergasted. Here's former VP
Speaker 1: Craig Berman. It was shocking when it came up because
Speaker 1: it was completely unexpected, and that was a turn that
Speaker 1: I'm not even sure Hollywood could come up with that
Speaker 1: kind of plot twist. You're listening to Foundering, I'm your host,
Speaker 1: brad Stone. The leaked story about Bezos's affair posts several mysteries.
Speaker 1: What happened to the bezos Is marriage, How did Bezos
Speaker 1: get involved with Laurence Sanchez, a former TV anchor, But
Speaker 1: most pressing of all, how did the National Enquirer get
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos's personal text messages as well as intimate photographs, including,
Speaker 1: as they claimed at the time, a Dick pick I
Speaker 1: spent several months unraveling these questions and also looking into
Speaker 1: a huge allegation posed by Bezos himself that there may
Speaker 1: have been a global conspiracy to embarrass him. The resulting
Speaker 1: saga touched on the Washington Post, journalistic freedom, Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: the crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, and the murder of
Speaker 1: dissident journalist Jamaica Shoji. Unbelievably, Bezos managed to come out ahead.
Speaker 1: In a stroke of pr genius, he turned the tables
Speaker 1: on his tabloid adversaries, But in the end, the entire
Speaker 1: episode would have enormous repercussions for Bezos and for Amazon,
Speaker 1: a company nearing a one trillion dollar market value at
Speaker 1: the very height of its control over the Internet and
Speaker 1: the US economy. It's the tech mogul versus the tabloid.
Speaker 1: We'll tell you that story after the break. All tech
Speaker 1: companies need a powerful founding story, and the story of
Speaker 1: Jeff and Mackenzie driving to Seattle after leaving New York
Speaker 1: City in has been part of Amazon's mythology from day one.
Speaker 1: In April eighteen, Axel Springer CEO Matthias Stuffner asked Jeff
Speaker 1: Bezos about it in an on stage interview. The launch
Speaker 1: of Amazon was really something that you did together. Could
Speaker 1: you describe a little bit what Mackenzie's role was. First
Speaker 1: of all, Mackenzie, you know, she had married the stable
Speaker 1: guy working on Wall Street, and a year after we
Speaker 1: got married, I went to her and said, I want
Speaker 1: to quit my job, move across the country and start
Speaker 1: this uh internet bookstore. And Mackenzie, of course, like she said, great,
Speaker 1: let's go, because she wanted to support it, and she
Speaker 1: knew that I had always had this passion for invention
Speaker 1: and starting a company. It's a story that Bezos had
Speaker 1: been telling for more than twenty years example that Mackenzie's
Speaker 1: acceptance of this dot com dream was key to the
Speaker 1: company's founding. Here he is talking to Henry Blodget of
Speaker 1: Business Insider. You turned fifty recently. Any change outlook on life? Uh? No,
Speaker 1: not really, you know, I Uh, I'm still dancing into
Speaker 1: the office. I love my life. I have four kids.
Speaker 1: My wife claims to still like me. I don't question
Speaker 1: her aggressively on that. Um, I do the dishes every night,
Speaker 1: and I can see that actually makes her like me.
Speaker 1: It's a very odd thing. It's I think that too.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty convinced it's like the sexiest thing I do.
Speaker 1: His wife humanized him. She made him seem like more
Speaker 1: than a businessman whose creation was up ending retail and
Speaker 1: devastating small merchants. In the early days of Amazon, Mackenzie
Speaker 1: was in a girl to the business of the company.
Speaker 1: She was Amazon's first accountant. As the company added employee,
Speaker 1: she was able to move away from the day to
Speaker 1: day business of Amazon and pursue her own interests. At Princeton,
Speaker 1: she had studied to be a writer. She published two
Speaker 1: novels called The Testing of Luther Albright and Traps, and
Speaker 1: one of her rare public appearances, Mackenzie Bezos described her
Speaker 1: then husband as one of her best readers. Here she
Speaker 1: is in conversation with Charlie Rose. He's such a good reader,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to get his reaction to the actual
Speaker 1: story so that he was so that he could be
Speaker 1: surprised in the right places. You know, I still have
Speaker 1: the copy he read. It's great because he very generously
Speaker 1: went through and wrote all the spots that made him
Speaker 1: laugh out loud, and all the spots that made him try.
Speaker 1: Mackenzie illuminated another side of Bezos. It was quite endearing
Speaker 1: that he was the kind of husband so supportive of
Speaker 1: her that he would read and mark up her manuscripts
Speaker 1: line by line. Here was somebody routinely accused of killing
Speaker 1: books actively making one better. Inside Amazon, employees viewed Bezos
Speaker 1: as a family man. Craig Berman, a former communications executive,
Speaker 1: worked directly with Bezos for over a decade. In my
Speaker 1: experience in working closely with him, uh family was everything
Speaker 1: to Jeff. He was extremely and still is extremely close
Speaker 1: to his family. That the reverence he has for his parents,
Speaker 1: it's as high as it gets, and that flowed into
Speaker 1: his own personal family. Mackenzie was no longer active in
Speaker 1: Amazon after the earliest days, but critic says her opinion
Speaker 1: was still highly valued. She came in to help Bezos
Speaker 1: prepare for the most high stakes presentations, including the unveiling
Speaker 1: of the Kindle. So Kendall came out is very, very newsworthy,
Speaker 1: and Jeff was front and center unveiling these products on stage,
Speaker 1: and there was an extraordinary amount of preparation. Mackenzie did
Speaker 1: come in and she would sit in the audience and
Speaker 1: watch Jeff go through multiple rehearsals, and she would provide feedback.
Speaker 1: In these moments, Craig and all the Amazon employees could
Speaker 1: see the deep respect that Bezos had for his wife.
Speaker 1: It came across as a marriage of equals. I think
Speaker 1: he absolutely trusted her judgment and valued her perspective. And
Speaker 1: I think Jeff appreciated having a really smart person who
Speaker 1: could be pretty objective. You know, we would prepare for it.
Speaker 1: It's like this is a rehearsal that Mackenzie's coming to. Now.
Speaker 1: Who can really say what happens inside the private confines
Speaker 1: of a marriage, but clearly over the years Bezos and
Speaker 1: Mackenzie grew apart. She was a bookish writer who rarely
Speaker 1: made public appearances, and as far as I could tell,
Speaker 1: she's virtually unknown. And see how all social circles. Bezos
Speaker 1: was drawn to public events, the trappings of wealth, and
Speaker 1: the lure of adventures like scuba diving and space travel.
Speaker 1: As we discussed in an earlier episode, he also gravitated
Speaker 1: to Hollywood and the bright lights of celebrity. On December three,
Speaker 1: he hosted a star studied Hollywood party at his home
Speaker 1: in Beverly Hills, Mackenzie was nowhere to be found, and
Speaker 1: one of the guests was a woman named Laurence Sanchez.
Speaker 1: She had her own helicopter video production company, and she
Speaker 1: was a veteran broadcaster, the former host of the tabloid
Speaker 1: TV show Extra and the morning program Good Day l A.
Speaker 1: Here she is doing a TV segment on a private
Speaker 1: jet company. Not that it's an option for everyone, but
Speaker 1: Flight Options is a company that offers private jets. You
Speaker 1: don't even understand how exciting this is for me. This
Speaker 1: is the most amazing plane. And look, I want to
Speaker 1: take you inside this beauty. It is unbelievable. Lauren was
Speaker 1: at the party with her then husband Patrick Whitesell. He's
Speaker 1: a major Hollywood agent. At the party, Beazos was photographed
Speaker 1: with Lauren and Patrick. I'm not entirely sure if that's
Speaker 1: the first time they met, but it's clear that after
Speaker 1: the party, Beazos and Laurence started seeing more of each other,
Speaker 1: and by the beginning of laurence Helicopter Company was filming
Speaker 1: documentary videos for bezos is private space company Blue Origin.
Speaker 1: Now is the time to open the promise of space
Speaker 1: to all and lay the way for generations to come.
Speaker 1: We are a blue origin, and this is where it begins.
Speaker 1: Sometime that year, it appears they started dating. Strangely, Bazos
Speaker 1: carried on the relationship out in the open, even though
Speaker 1: he was still married. His total disregard for public attention
Speaker 1: was baffling. Either he didn't anticipate the coming avalanche of
Speaker 1: negative publicity or he didn't care. They were photographed at
Speaker 1: a hotel in Miami and at fancy restaurants in Venice
Speaker 1: Beach and Santa Monica. That December, Bezos had another celebrity
Speaker 1: filled party for Amazon Studios at his Hollywood home. Once again,
Speaker 1: Mackenzie wasn't there. This time, Lauren was by his side.
Speaker 1: So it was probably inevitable that someone would reveal their affair,
Speaker 1: and that Bezos would try to get ahead of the
Speaker 1: story by tweeting news of his divorce. Here's Craig. I
Speaker 1: was personally stunned, like jaw dropping to the floor, stunned.
Speaker 1: My colleagues were just as stunned. I think that was
Speaker 1: the universal reaction. It was so unexpected coming from this
Speaker 1: person who really, I mean, you talk about a reverence
Speaker 1: within an organization, Those those types of things just didn't happen,
Speaker 1: And so forward to happen at that level that the
Speaker 1: surprise factor was it was off the chart. Crig says
Speaker 1: that the most unsettling thing was that Bezos preached good
Speaker 1: decisions and sound judgment within the company. It was like
Speaker 1: Bezos had violated his own code. His employees felt let down.
Speaker 1: This is a person and a company that put such
Speaker 1: a premium on having good judgment, and here was an
Speaker 1: incident where it looked like this person maybe wasn't displaying
Speaker 1: a level of judgment that that people expected of him,
Speaker 1: and I think it was really jarring. Although Bezos got
Speaker 1: to announce his impending divorce himself, he couldn't contain the
Speaker 1: mail stroke them. The affair was revealed, the intimate text
Speaker 1: messages were leaked, and then things got even weirder. A
Speaker 1: few weeks later, on February seven, Bezos posted a remarkable
Speaker 1: essay to medium saying that he was being blackmailed. I
Speaker 1: asked my colleague to read a selection of it. Something
Speaker 1: unusual happened to me yesterday. Actually, for me, it wasn't
Speaker 1: just unusual. It was a first. I was made an
Speaker 1: offer I couldn't refuse, Or at least that's what the
Speaker 1: top people at the National Enquirer thought. I'm glad they
Speaker 1: thought that, because it emboldened them to put it all
Speaker 1: in writing, rather than capitulate to extortion and blackmail. I've
Speaker 1: decided to publish exactly what they sent me, despite the
Speaker 1: personal cost and embarrassment they threatened. This was entirely unprecedented,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot to unpack in here. In his essay,
Speaker 1: Beazo said he had hired private investigators to learn how
Speaker 1: the National Enquirer had gotten a text messages. The Inquirer
Speaker 1: seemed desperate to shut it down, and Bezos compet and
Speaker 1: paste and entire emails from the inquirers editor in chief.
Speaker 1: In the emails, the editor seemed to threaten to publish
Speaker 1: the intimate photographs that Bezos had exchanged with his girlfriend,
Speaker 1: including something the editor called a below the belt selfie.
Speaker 1: In his essay, Bezos poses the question why was the
Speaker 1: National Enquirer so desperate to stop his investigators from sniffing around?
Speaker 1: This is where Bezos leaves the realm of established facts.
Speaker 1: He starts to construct a hypothetical case. He suggested the
Speaker 1: real culprits of his leaked photos might have been enemies
Speaker 1: of the Washington Post. Remember Bezos owns the Post, and
Speaker 1: the Post had a long list of enemies. In two
Speaker 1: thousand nineteen, they had aggressively covered the Trump presidency. That's
Speaker 1: one enemy. Also, a few months before, a columnist for
Speaker 1: the Post named Jamalika Shoji was brutally murdered by Saudi agents,
Speaker 1: and the Post comprehensively reported on the atrocity. That made
Speaker 1: the Post a new enemy, the government of Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 1: whose Crown Prince allegedly ordered the killing. By the way,
Speaker 1: the Crown Prince denies this. Bezos just sort of put
Speaker 1: these things out there. He never says it explicitly, but
Speaker 1: he leaves readers to connect the dots that maybe his
Speaker 1: intimate text messages were leaked because of some connection between
Speaker 1: the National Enquirer, Donald Trump, the Saudi government and their
Speaker 1: common enemy, the Washington Post. Here's an excerpt of what
Speaker 1: he wrote. My ownership of the Washington Post is a
Speaker 1: complexifier for me. It's unavoidable that certain powerful people who
Speaker 1: experienced Washington Post news coverage will wrongly conclude I am
Speaker 1: their enemy. For reasons still to be better understood. The
Speaker 1: Saudi angle seems to hit a particularly sensitive nerve. The
Speaker 1: essay melted the Internet. In media and tech circles, it
Speaker 1: was all anyone could talk about at the time. I'm
Speaker 1: writing a book about Amazon and Bezos, and I have
Speaker 1: the uncomfortable revelation that the story is moving in a
Speaker 1: completely unexpected and tawdry direction. To write a book about
Speaker 1: this iconic tech leader, I'm going to have to write
Speaker 1: about a sex life. And I have to examine whether
Speaker 1: Bezos was the victim of a global conspiracy or is
Speaker 1: reel adversaries, tabloid journalists or the enemies of the Washington
Speaker 1: Post and a free press will unravel that mystery next. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the National Enquirer published an eleven page spread about
Speaker 1: Bezo his affair with Laurence Sanchez, and Bezos is now
Speaker 1: waging an all out war with the tabloid trying to
Speaker 1: understand how they got his text messages. He hired a
Speaker 1: very powerful private investigator named Gavin de Becker. This guy
Speaker 1: is kind of a legend in the security field. Here's
Speaker 1: Gavin describing his credentials in an editorial about his work
Speaker 1: for Bezos. I asked my colleague to read what he wrote.
Speaker 1: For forty years, I've advised at risk public figures and
Speaker 1: government agencies on high stakes security matters. My career has
Speaker 1: included working with the CIA, FBI at the Reagan White House,
Speaker 1: counseling foreign leaders, and advising on controversial murder cases. I've
Speaker 1: seen a lot, and yet I've recently seen things that
Speaker 1: have surprised even me. Almost immediately, Gavin suspicions fell on
Speaker 1: one of Laurence Sanchez's closest confidence, her older brother, Michael.
Speaker 1: Michael was a Hollywood talent manager who had helped Lauren
Speaker 1: with her career over the years. He later spoke to
Speaker 1: Fox News about his relationship with his sister. I've been
Speaker 1: managing Laurence since the day she came home from the hospital,
Speaker 1: and through the highest of highs and lowest of low's,
Speaker 1: I've always been there to do whatever she needs and
Speaker 1: to protect her whenever she needs protection. To me, Michael
Speaker 1: sounds a bit defensive here. He's trumpeting his professional relationship
Speaker 1: with his sister, all claiming that she needs his protection
Speaker 1: as if he's the guardian. I'm an accomplished fifty year
Speaker 1: old woman, and as we'll come to find out, Michael
Speaker 1: Sanchez was deeply involved in his sister's life. He went
Speaker 1: out for dinner several times with Bezos and Lauren while
Speaker 1: they dated, and he even attended another star studied party
Speaker 1: at bezos Is home. He described his first impressions of
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos to Fox News well, to be perfectly honest,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to like him because it would have
Speaker 1: made all of our lives much simpler. But when I
Speaker 1: met him, he was charming, brilliant, loved flying and everyone
Speaker 1: in our family and his pilots, so we had a
Speaker 1: lot to talk about. And most importantly, he was he
Speaker 1: was deeply in love with Lauren. Michael is one of
Speaker 1: the strangest people I've ever interviewed for a business story.
Speaker 1: He's charismatic and charming, full of swaggering confidence and gossip,
Speaker 1: but he's also full of contradictions. He's an avid Trump supporter,
Speaker 1: and he's gay. He styles himself as a public relations guru,
Speaker 1: but imagines he has complete control over the media, which
Speaker 1: of course is impossible. As soon as his name surfaced
Speaker 1: as a leaker in the Bezos affair, Michael Sanchez said
Speaker 1: that any hint of his involvement was crazy. One soulce
Speaker 1: close to Jeff Bezos. His private investigators tells CBS News
Speaker 1: they've conducted multiple interviews with Michael Sanchez, the brother of
Speaker 1: Bezos his own girlfriend. They say Sanchez, a Trump support,
Speaker 1: discussed the matter with What just Stone and caught a
Speaker 1: page two of Mr Trump stulches defenders. Contacted by CBS News,
Speaker 1: a person close to Michael Sanchez dismissed allegations of his
Speaker 1: involvement as quote sloppy leaks and crazy conservative conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: Gavin de Beecker confirmed to the Daily Beast that his
Speaker 1: firm did speak to Michael Sanchez, and in their conversations
Speaker 1: several things struck them as highly unusual. Gavin's firm says
Speaker 1: Michael shared outlandish theories about how the Inquirer might have
Speaker 1: learned about Bazos's affair with his sister. He suggested that
Speaker 1: the Deep State or American spies might have hacked into
Speaker 1: Bezos's phone. He also bragged about his ties to right
Speaker 1: wing Trump world types, and he suggested that he knew
Speaker 1: the editor of The National Enquirer and kept bragging about
Speaker 1: how he could manipulate the paper's coverage. By the end
Speaker 1: of these phone calls, the private investigator was convinced that
Speaker 1: Bezos's girlfriend's brother was a culprit soon Bezos's camp starts
Speaker 1: talking to the press too. I asked my colleague to
Speaker 1: read for Gavin de Becker. Michael Sanchez has been among
Speaker 1: the people we've been speaking with and looking at strong
Speaker 1: leads point to political motives. That's from an interview Gavin
Speaker 1: de Becker gave to The Daily Beast and probably no coincidence.
Speaker 1: The Daily Beast is owned by Jeff Bezos's friend Barry Diller.
Speaker 1: So then, in a non televised interview with Fox News,
Speaker 1: Michael Sanchez defends himself sort of. Here's anchor Howard Kurtz
Speaker 1: describing their conversation. The notion that Laurence Sanchez brother Michael Sanche,
Speaker 1: as a Hollywood talent manager, was somehow responsible for this.
Speaker 1: It didn't just sort of bubble up out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: Sources at am I and even the lawyer for David Pecker,
Speaker 1: the Inquirer owner who's a close friend of President Trump,
Speaker 1: have kind of tried to finger him. But Michael Sanche
Speaker 1: has told me on the record that there are in
Speaker 1: fact multiple suspects, that he's never seen any of this
Speaker 1: salacious pick chers or tex uh and that in fact,
Speaker 1: any attempt to implicate him this is one. So Michael
Speaker 1: Sanchez is out there talking to the media denying everything,
Speaker 1: and this puts the National enquire in a very awkward position.
Speaker 1: The guy they're hinting as their confidential source is saying
Speaker 1: he's not their confidential source. And if Michael isn't the source,
Speaker 1: then it sort of lent credibility to Bazos's theory that
Speaker 1: the Inquirers involved in some sort of political conspiracy. This
Speaker 1: was something the Inquirer absolutely wanted to shut down because
Speaker 1: they were already in hot water for something else. Tonight,
Speaker 1: the publisher of The National Inquirer making headlines of his own,
Speaker 1: David Pecker, granted immunity by federal prosecutors investigating Michael Cohen,
Speaker 1: the President's former fixer. According to a source familiar with
Speaker 1: the matter, Pecker is a longtime friend of the President's
Speaker 1: who helped catch and kill negative stories about him, including,
Speaker 1: according to Cohen, having his company pay a woman for
Speaker 1: exclusive rights to her account of an alleged affair with
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. Before the Basos ordeal, the National Inquirer was
Speaker 1: caught in an unrelated scandal involving another rich guy and
Speaker 1: his alleged affair. In that case, it was Donald Trump
Speaker 1: and an adult actress named Stormy Daniels. The publisher of
Speaker 1: The Inquirers a longtime friend of Trump's, and the tabloid
Speaker 1: went to unusual lengths to protect him. Essentially, they interviewed
Speaker 1: Stormy Daniels and other women who claimed to have damaging
Speaker 1: information about Trump. They bought the exclusive rights to the
Speaker 1: women's stories, and then they never ran the articles, and
Speaker 1: because the Inquirer had exclusive access, the women had no
Speaker 1: way to get their stories out. This practice is known
Speaker 1: in the media business as catch and kill because they
Speaker 1: catch an elusive piece of information and then kill it
Speaker 1: by suppressing the story. This became a problem for The
Speaker 1: Inquirer after Trump became a candidate for president, because it
Speaker 1: could be seen as a violation of campaign finance laws.
Speaker 1: Not good. Eventually, their publisher am I, signed a deal
Speaker 1: with the U. S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District
Speaker 1: of New York. If they violate the deal, their executives
Speaker 1: could be charged with a crime. So they were very
Speaker 1: sensitive to accusations of wrongdoing, especially charges that they were
Speaker 1: once again working with the Trump administration or say, the
Speaker 1: Saudi government. This is all happening in the background when
Speaker 1: the Inquirer goes to war with Bezos. So, with the
Speaker 1: catch and kill scandal hanging over their heads, the National
Speaker 1: Enquirers about to do something very, very unusual after the
Speaker 1: allegations of Saudi involvement. The National enquires lawyers also hit
Speaker 1: the TV circuit. It's taboo for news organizations to talk
Speaker 1: about their off the record sources, but two people watching
Speaker 1: the saga unfold, a lawyer for The Inquirer's parent company
Speaker 1: am I, seemed to come very close to doing just
Speaker 1: that on TV. Here's attorney Elkan Abramo. It's on ABC
Speaker 1: with George Stephanopoulos. It absolutely is not extortion and not blackmail.
Speaker 1: What happened was the story was given to the National
Speaker 1: Enquirer by a reliable source that had given information to
Speaker 1: the National Enquirer for seven years prior to this story.
Speaker 1: It was a source that was well known to both
Speaker 1: Mr Bezos and Miss Sanchez. Was it Michael Sanchez? I
Speaker 1: can't discuss who the source was. Uh just it's a
Speaker 1: confidential within a m I UM, so I'm not going
Speaker 1: to answer who the source was. It was somebody close
Speaker 1: to both Bezos and Miss Sanchez. It's crazy to me
Speaker 1: that a lawyer for the papers on TV dropping hints
Speaker 1: about the confidential source of their story. But you've got
Speaker 1: to keep in mind that it's in the National Enquire's
Speaker 1: best interests if the story starts and stops with one
Speaker 1: leaker without any political conspiracies. So case closed, right, A
Speaker 1: brother sells out a sister, either for money, notoriety or jealousy. Really,
Speaker 1: it all should have ended right there. But things were
Speaker 1: about to get even more complicated because, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: Bezos and Gavin remained attached to the possibility that there
Speaker 1: were political motives behind the whole thing. So they take
Speaker 1: one more swing at saying the Saudi government had something
Speaker 1: to do with Bezos's leak romantic text messages. In March,
Speaker 1: Gavin wrote a guest article for The Daily Beast. In
Speaker 1: the essay, he again points a finger at Michael, but
Speaker 1: he added reality is complicated. It can't always be boiled
Speaker 1: down to a simple narrative like the brother did it.
Speaker 1: Gavin theorized that by the time Sanchez gave the tabloid
Speaker 1: paper the Goods, the Inquirer had already seen text messages
Speaker 1: between the couple. In other words, Gavin suggested there was
Speaker 1: a second culprit, and he was now convinced that wrong
Speaker 1: doer was overseas. Our investigators and several experts concluded with
Speaker 1: high confidence that the Saudis had access to bezos his
Speaker 1: phone and gained private information. As of today, it is
Speaker 1: unclear to what degree if any Am I was aware
Speaker 1: of the details. Now this might sound outlandish, but Gavin
Speaker 1: and Bezos did have solid reasons to believe the government
Speaker 1: of Saudi Arabia was out to get him. For the
Speaker 1: past few months, an online army of Twitter accounts had
Speaker 1: been attacking Bezos. The accounts are believed to be linked
Speaker 1: to Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 1: Their tweets called for a boycott of Amazon's website in
Speaker 1: the Middle East. Here's a sample tweet. It's pretty horrible.
Speaker 1: We're after you. The Jew worshiper of money will go
Speaker 1: bankrupt by the will of God at the hands of
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia, the owner of Amazon, and Shook is the
Speaker 1: owner of the Washington Post. Is the spiteful Jew who
Speaker 1: insults us every day. End quote. By the way, Bezos
Speaker 1: is not Jewish, but it didn't matter. The Saudi government's
Speaker 1: hatred of Bezos was real. They blamed him for the
Speaker 1: Washington Post coverage of the murder of Jamaica Shoji, and
Speaker 1: though there was no real evidence that the Saudis were
Speaker 1: the original leakers to The Inquirer, people kind of lapped
Speaker 1: it up. Here's the thing, The idea that Bezos had
Speaker 1: been targeted because of his brave ownership of the Washington
Speaker 1: Post was kind of compelling, so public opinions swung over
Speaker 1: to Bezos camp after that. The only question left is
Speaker 1: whether the Saudi theory was even real In this ring
Speaker 1: of the FBI and federal prosecutors set out to investigate
Speaker 1: the truth of this tangled saga was finally going to
Speaker 1: come out, That's next. Over the spring of the National
Speaker 1: Inquirer removed as editor in chief, and their parent company
Speaker 1: am I put out a remarkable statement explicitly denying that
Speaker 1: there was any conspiracy or mystery at all to the
Speaker 1: origins of their story. Quote. The fact of the matter
Speaker 1: is it was Michael Sanchez who tipped the National enquir
Speaker 1: off to the affair on September ten, and over the
Speaker 1: course of four months, provided all of the materials for
Speaker 1: our investigation. His continued efforts to discuss and falsely represent
Speaker 1: our reporting and his role in it has waived any
Speaker 1: source confidentiality. There was no involvement by any other third
Speaker 1: party whatsoever. End quote. So the National Enquirer was no
Speaker 1: longer dancing around it. Laurence Sanchez's brother was the sole leaker.
Speaker 1: It would seem like they broke a fundamental principle of
Speaker 1: journalism by revealing their secret source. But I actually have
Speaker 1: some sympathy for the National Enquirer here because I spent
Speaker 1: months talking to Michael when I was reporting my book
Speaker 1: Amazon Unbound. He asked that I used the following statement
Speaker 1: in my manuscript. Everything I did protected Jeff Lauren and
Speaker 1: my family. I would never sell out anyone. I also
Speaker 1: spoke to Michael confidentially, meaning I wasn't planning on revealing
Speaker 1: him as a source. But when he read the conclusions
Speaker 1: in my book that he was the lone source of
Speaker 1: information to The Inquirer, he strongly disagreed and he started
Speaker 1: acting out against me. This time. Over the course of
Speaker 1: he emailed many high profile journalists about our conversations, accusing
Speaker 1: me of sloppy reporting and cherry picking facts to cast
Speaker 1: him in a bad light. So because he outed himself
Speaker 1: as one of my sources, I feel free to discuss
Speaker 1: it now. See, Michael and Lauren had a complicated relationship.
Speaker 1: They fought over money, and they were frequently estranged. In
Speaker 1: our conversations, Michael had a lot of bad things to
Speaker 1: tell me about a sister. He criticized her intelligence, her
Speaker 1: personal relationships, and her skills as a broadcaster. He also
Speaker 1: thought very highly of himself, and he seemed to deeply
Speaker 1: believe that he could control the media. It was a
Speaker 1: dangerous combination. One mystery that Michael cleared up for me
Speaker 1: was whether the National Enquirer ever had a dick pick
Speaker 1: from Jeff Bezos. Remember the Inquirer claimed they did, and
Speaker 1: they threatened to publish it. As all this was happening,
Speaker 1: Mike claimed in the press that he never sent the
Speaker 1: Inquirer dick pic, and he went so far to suggest
Speaker 1: that if such a photograph existed, then there must have
Speaker 1: been a second leaguer. This really angered the Inquirer because
Speaker 1: again it opens the door to the suggestion that there
Speaker 1: might be some bigger conspiracy. So I'm talking to Michael
Speaker 1: about all this for several months, and one day, over
Speaker 1: drinks in the Castro neighborhood of San Francisco. He told
Speaker 1: me what I believe is the truth. He said that
Speaker 1: for weeks he tantalized the Inquirer editors with the notion
Speaker 1: that he did have a dick pick. Then he met
Speaker 1: with one of their reporters in person and they faced
Speaker 1: time the papers to top editors, and this is when
Speaker 1: he showed them a photo that he had downloaded from
Speaker 1: a site called rent men dot com. So basically, he
Speaker 1: told me that he pulled one over on the Inquirer.
Speaker 1: They believed they had the incriminating photo, and they did
Speaker 1: have a dick pick, just not one belonging to Jeff Bezos.
Speaker 1: When all this finally came out that Michael Sanchez was
Speaker 1: playing all sides, he was furious and he launched a
Speaker 1: volley of lawsuits against am I, the editor in chief
Speaker 1: of The Inquirer, Jeff Bezos, and Bezos's investigator, Gavin de Becker.
Speaker 1: He charged them with defamation, and ironically, Michael's lawsuits ended
Speaker 1: up clarifying the whole matter. In the litigation, court documents
Speaker 1: showed Sanchez had signed a contract with the Inquirer paying
Speaker 1: him two hundred thousand dollars for the story, and the
Speaker 1: reporters and editors said under oath that Sanchez was their
Speaker 1: sole source of information and that authorities had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with it. Sanchez ended up losing most of those
Speaker 1: cases and had to pay Bezos two hundred and eight
Speaker 1: thousand dollars for legal fees. It's pretty ironic that he
Speaker 1: paid out to Bezos almost the exact amount of money
Speaker 1: that he was paid by the Inquirer. In the end,
Speaker 1: Michael Sanchez's story is kind of sad. He could have
Speaker 1: been living large with Bezos and Lauren and their mega
Speaker 1: yachts and opulent vacation properties. But first he betrays his sister,
Speaker 1: and then he just keeps betraying himself by constantly gossiping
Speaker 1: to the press and by launching these failed lawsuits. He
Speaker 1: loses his relationship with his sister, then his credibility, and
Speaker 1: then he loses a large sum of money. So was
Speaker 1: there any truth to the idea of a global conspiracy
Speaker 1: that the Saudi government may have hacked bezos phone in
Speaker 1: retaliation for the Washington Post coverage of the murder of
Speaker 1: Jamal Ka Shoji. Well, this was also a matter of
Speaker 1: confusion and contradictory information. In early The Guardian published a
Speaker 1: report claiming that Bezos's phone was hacked that he had
Speaker 1: downloaded a piece of spyware called Pegasus. We're learning new
Speaker 1: details of an next ordinary claimed that Amazon CEO Jeff
Speaker 1: bezos phone was hacked by Saudi Arabia. The Guardian reports
Speaker 1: an investigation ordered by Bezos blames the hacking on a
Speaker 1: personal message that apparently came from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed
Speaker 1: been solvon I talked to several security experts who weren't
Speaker 1: convinced there was any real evidence Bezos his phone was hacked,
Speaker 1: and on top of that, there was zero evidence that,
Speaker 1: even if he was hacked, that that was how his
Speaker 1: private information had been leaked to the National Enquirer. And finally,
Speaker 1: both the FBI and the Manhattan d A looked into
Speaker 1: this tangle of accusations and dropped the matter without bringing
Speaker 1: any charges at all. So why did we hear so
Speaker 1: much about this story? Remember, Bezos wrote about it in
Speaker 1: his medium post, and his investigator brought it up in
Speaker 1: the media at least twice. Well, it suggests a few possibilities.
Speaker 1: One is that Bezos sincerely believed that he was hacked,
Speaker 1: and the Saudis were involved, and he wanted to expose
Speaker 1: the Inquirer for their role in the treachery. Another option
Speaker 1: is more cynical, that Bezos didn't truly believe it, but
Speaker 1: he wanted to distract from the much more mundane to
Speaker 1: pressing story that he was caught cheating on his wife
Speaker 1: and that his girlfriend's brother sold them out. I asked
Speaker 1: Craig Berman, the former Amazon VP, what he thought Bezos
Speaker 1: believed my guests, and again I'm speculating my guess as
Speaker 1: they he and his advisors felt comfortable that they had
Speaker 1: gotten to some facts and felt comfortable enough to go
Speaker 1: out and confront those facts. I think they executed it
Speaker 1: really well. I think they achieved what they were trying
Speaker 1: to do. Now, whether or not it was the true
Speaker 1: fact or not, I don't know. And so if it was,
Speaker 1: if it was meant to UH to get people off
Speaker 1: the trail of something else, it may have been effective
Speaker 1: in that. I don't think we will ever know for
Speaker 1: sure if Bezos' phone was really hacked and if he
Speaker 1: thought the Saudis had tipped off the Inquirer. But I
Speaker 1: think ultimately Bezos and his handlers were happy to muddy
Speaker 1: the waters, letting the confusion and ambiguity about a possible
Speaker 1: global conspiracy swirl around mate Bezos look good. It allowed
Speaker 1: him to keep alive the possibility that his brave support
Speaker 1: of his newspaper, The Washington Post was the source of
Speaker 1: his personal troubles. Around a year after the Inquirer story published,
Speaker 1: he spoken a memorial for Jamaica Shoji. Here he is
Speaker 1: addressing Kho's fiancee. No one should ever have to endure
Speaker 1: what you did. It is unimaginable, and you need to
Speaker 1: know that you are in our hearts. We are here
Speaker 1: and you are not alone. In this epic battle between
Speaker 1: the National Enquirer and Jeff Bezos, it looked as if
Speaker 1: the Inquirer scored an early decisive victory. They broke a
Speaker 1: huge story about the richest man in the world having
Speaker 1: an affair with the wife of one of the most
Speaker 1: powerful men in Hollywood, but ultimately Bezos one on the
Speaker 1: pr front. In the popular imagination, the story of the
Speaker 1: tech mogul and the tabloid got blurry to the extent
Speaker 1: that people remember it at all. It's with a lot
Speaker 1: of confusion where the Saudi's involved, Trump the brother That's
Speaker 1: why Craig still marvels at how Bezos managed to pull
Speaker 1: off this victory against the news publication. He certainly did
Speaker 1: defeat in and spectacular fashion an outlet that was really
Speaker 1: really coming after him hard. It was a defeat that
Speaker 1: most public figures lose in our business of communications and
Speaker 1: public relations. You don't answer the door when Mike Wallace knocks,
Speaker 1: and if the inquirer has something, It's probably true. Most
Speaker 1: people don't survive those, so Bezos one. But what about
Speaker 1: his company? Remember he spent twenty years building an image
Speaker 1: with an Amazon as a family man, and now their
Speaker 1: CEO wasn't an entirely different orbit of celebrity and notoriety.
Speaker 1: Tabloid newspapers and websites would follow his every move With
Speaker 1: his new girlfriend by his side. He chow up courtside
Speaker 1: at Wimbledon, at the super Bowl in Miami, even in
Speaker 1: the DJ booth of a popular nightclub. Bezos was enjoying
Speaker 1: this a lot. He seemed to love flaunting his new
Speaker 1: relationship with Lauren and together indulging in the trappings of
Speaker 1: exorbitant wealth, and that was going to be a problem
Speaker 1: for the CEO of Amazon. Modesty and frugality were important
Speaker 1: values of the company, even more so with antitrust authorities
Speaker 1: investigating its growing power. The CEO image that Beazos had
Speaker 1: spent two decades cultivating of a devoted family man and
Speaker 1: committed husband was a thing of the past. In a sense,
Speaker 1: his personal life had become incompatible with his professional responsibilities.
Speaker 1: He had a choice to make, and it would be
Speaker 1: a historic one. Here's Craig again. I think he does
Speaker 1: have a level of self awareness to kind of understand
Speaker 1: what the impacts of those things are. And I think
Speaker 1: that maybe what may have ultimately contributed to him stepping
Speaker 1: away from the CEO role Bezos's resignation and his blast
Speaker 1: off into space on a Blue Origin rocket that's coming
Speaker 1: up in the next and final episode of Foundering. The
Speaker 1: Amazon story. Foundering is hosted by me brad Stone Sean
Speaker 1: When as our executive producer, Raimondo as our audio engineer.
Speaker 1: Molly Nugent is our associate producer, Mark Million and Manner
Speaker 1: May Robin a Jello and Molly shoots our story editors
Speaker 1: special thanks to Mark Bergen. Francesca Levi is the head
Speaker 1: of Bloomberg Podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and if you
Speaker 1: like our show, leave a review. Most importantly, tell your
Speaker 1: friends see you next time.