Blackmail Isn’t Always a Crime
The National Enquirer’s treatment of Jeff Bezos is certainly vile, but not all blackmail is illegal.
Blackmail is hard to prove.
Photographer: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images North AmericaI’m not sure why anybody, even the National Enquirer, would pick a fight with the richest man in the world. It’s one thing to write about Jeff Bezos having an affair. That kind of story has long been the Enquirer’s vile stock in trade. But to threaten Bezos unless he calls off the dogs — that is, reins in his own investigation of how the tabloid got its hands on his private text messages — well, that’s a mistake no self-respecting merchant of sleaze should make. Like the song says: You don’t tug on Superman’s cape.
That’s particularly true in a case like this one. If the facts are as Bezos describes them, then what the Enquirer has attempted certainly looks like blackmail. The emails from the tabloid that Bezos published at Medium demand that he drop the investigation or face publication of explicit photographs.