Saudi Arabia denies role in Bezos’s leaked messages

Saudi Arabia had "absolutely nothing to do" with the National Enquirer's reporting on an extramarital relationship involving Amazon.com Inc Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, the kingdom's minister of state for foreign affairs said.

Bezos on Thursday accused American Media Inc (AMI), the Enquirer's owner, of trying to blackmail him with the threat of publishing "intimate photos" he allegedly sent to his girlfriend unless he said in public that the U.S. tabloid's reporting on him was not politically motivated.

The Saudi minister of state for foreign affairs, Adel al-Jubeir, took to the TV political shows in the US on Sunday, denying the kingdom had played a role in the publication of lurid texts between Bezos and his extramarital girlfriend, Lauren Sánchez. “This is something between the two parties, we have nothing to do with it,” he told CBS’ Face the Nation, adding: “It sounds to me like a soap opera.”

That a senior Saudi government minister felt it necessary to deny suggestions that the kingdom had somehow been involved in the publication of the photos by the most notorious supermarket tabloid in America is an indication of how incendiary the Bezos allegations have been. The Amazon CEO released them in an explosive blog post on Thursday in which he accused AMI of “extortion and blackmail”.

In the post, Bezos revealed correspondence in which AMI had threatened to release “d*ck picks” unless he immediately called off an investigation into the source of the initial leak and retracted any claim that AMI’s coverage was “politically motivated or influenced by political forces”.

Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post, went on to note the close relationship between AMI and Donald Trump, and between the media company and the Saudi government. He wrote that what he called the “Saudi angle” hit a “particularly sensitive nerve” with David Pecker, AMI’s CEO.

The spat between Bezos, AMI and Saudi Arabia is further complicated by Saudi’s role in the killing in October of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. The Washington Post, under Bezos’ ownership, has aggressively reported evidence that the murder was ordered personally by the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.