
Does Jeff Bezos Have a Legal Case Against the National Enquirer? - colinprince
https://www.wired.com/story/jeff-bezos-legal-case-national-enquirer/
======
jaabe
I’m not American, and maybe I just don’t know enough about your legal system
or this Bezos thing, but I just can’t wrap my head around it. How could he
not?

How can attempted blackmail with someones private, and, stolen photos not be
illegal?

~~~
21
Read the emails carefully, and remember they were written by lawyers. It
didn't seem to reach the level of criminal blackmail to me. Experts quoted in
the article agree.

If they do however publish the picture everyone talks about, I'm pretty sure
they will be destroyed just like Gawker was in the Hulk Hogan case.

~~~
jaabe
This is exactly what I don’t get though, how can you get away with extortion
by writing it in lawyer tongue?

~~~
P_I_Staker
Lawyers have a responsibility to act ethically. You aren't necessarily going
to get into trouble for what they do, if you're only following their
instructions. This is shaky legal ground and a rarely successful defense that
came up with all the Tump stuff. Here it seems it might be appropriate though.

"Advice of counsel defense", a Quote from Jens David Ohlin, a vice dean at
Cornell Law School (taken from business insider article)

> The advice-of-counsel defense "doesn't apply if both the lawyer and the
> client are on the same page that what they are doing is illegal in some
> way," Ohlin said. "According to Cohen, both he and Trump understood that
> they were paying hush money to influence an election, and then covered it up
> to hide the illegality."

However, in this case, did both parties know that something illegal was going
on? That's more of a stretch here. If I met with a lawyer and said "lets
illegally commit extortion", obviously that's illegal. If my attorney just
does it, as a part of an ongoing legal dispute, it's far less clear (lots of
legal disputes can seem like extortion; eg. settle with us now or you'll have
to pay even more to defend, is a standard strategy). That lack of clarity
could be plenty of motivation to dissuade prosecutors from bringing charges;
especially if they're on good terms with the party and happily using them in
an ongoing investigation.

~~~
gamblor956
Blackmail communicated through a lawyer is still blackmail, and moreover makes
a lawyer a party to blackmail.

AMI's lawyers are on very shaky ground here and there's a realistic chance
they end this decade disbarred.

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gigatexal
The ace that Bezos has is that he can like, Thiel and the gawker case, Bezos
can drown the National Enquirer in legal battles until they’re bankrupt even
if he gives half his fortune away to his soon-to-be ex-wife.

~~~
throwaway9980
Maybe you’re being downvoted because the comment doesn’t address the quality
of the legal case or maybe because people don’t want to think of Bezos in this
way. Aside from the possibility that a state actor was involved in
intercepting his communication, I think what you’re pointing out is the most
interesting aspect of this whole mess.

If I were running the National Enquirer and wanted to make a list of the best
ways to ruin my company and likely myself, going after Bezos in this fashion
would be very near the top of the list.

~~~
gigatexal
Yeah I’m not a lawyer. Just if I was in his shoes my first thought would be
“I’m rich. I’ll squash them like a big.”

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buboard
In the end it doesn't matter that much if he has not a legal case, and it is a
win as far as he has managed to de-weaponize this kind of public shaming
threats over what is normal consensual behavior.

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wuschb
Better question, is there a felony federal case for blackmail?

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Veedrac
> For one, the tabloid could argue it was merely trying in good faith to
> resolve a dispute with Bezos—not attempting to blackmail or extort him. This
> reasoning is why, for example, a lawyer can send someone a letter saying
> their client will agree to settle a lawsuit if certain terms are met.

So IANAL, but my understanding after some research is that this is well-trod
territory resolved by deciding whether there was a ‘lack of nexus’. To quote
State v. Pauling, which I have not read in full,

> Molotov Pauling was convicted of second degree extortion under former RCW
> 9A.56.130 (1975) for threatening to disseminate and, in actuality,
> disseminating nude photos of a former girl friend to collect a valid $5,000
> small claims court judgment he had against her. The Court of Appeals,
> stating that the statute lacked a requirement that the threat be wrongful,
> declared former RCW 9A.56.130 unconstitutionally overbroad because it
> prohibited threats that constituted protected speech and reversed Pauling's
> conviction. We hold that a limiting construction is available, requiring
> that the evidence shows a “lack of nexus” between the threat made and the
> claim of right. This construction confines the statute's application to only
> extortionate threats that are inherently wrongful and are not protected
> speech.

> [...]

> There are significant differences between, on the one hand, threatened
> disclosures of such matters as consumer complaints and nonpayment of dues,
> as to which the threatener has a plausible claim of right, and, on the other
> hand, threatened disclosures of such matters as sexual indiscretions that
> have no nexus with any plausible claim of right.

> Id. (emphasis added). The court held, “where a threat of harm to a person's
> reputation seeks money or property to which the threatener does not have,
> and cannot reasonably believe she has, a claim of right, or where the threat
> has no nexus to a plausible claim of right, the threat is inherently
> wrongful․” Id. at 71 (emphasis added). Although a person might have a legal
> right to collect a judgment, there is no nexus between the exercise of that
> right and the threat to post embarrassing nude photos on the Internet. On
> the other hand, a person with a legal right to collect a judgment would have
> a nexus to a threat to institute garnishment proceedings.

[https://caselaw.findlaw.com/wa-supreme-
court/1260888.html](https://caselaw.findlaw.com/wa-supreme-court/1260888.html)

I found about about this through a good article by the Washington Post.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-
conspiracy/wp/201...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-
conspiracy/wp/2017/07/06/it-is-actually-difficult-to-define-blackmail)

Although I cannot confirm any of this—it's not my field—I can say for certain
that I think this _should_ be textbook blackmail, and it's hard to imagine the
case actually failing.

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threeseed
The more interesting questions are (a) how did the National Enquirer get the
text messages and if it was from the US government as Bezos’ PI believed then
(b) did Trump know about it.

I would expect House Committees and the DOJ to be all over this in the coming
months.

~~~
crystaln
Indeed however "government entity" could refer to Saudi or Russian states
also. I haven't seen any indication they were referring to the US government.

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patrickg_zill
That a guy who is building the surveillance system for governments worldwide
and who has serfdom-lite attitudes towards labor laws, is suddenly a
sympathetic character on HN, is kind of surprising to me.

~~~
daveevad
I share your sentiment of surprise.

Bezos' pretense that he's standing up for the powerless doesn't ring true to
me ("If in my position I can’t stand up to this kind of extortion, how many
people can?") when contrasted against his attitudes towards his employees'
working conditions.

This story to me is Bezos did something, that while increasingly common in
modern America, remains viewed as a foolish thing to do. Nothings going to
change that, not a criminal extortion attempt by AEI, not even a heartfelt
medium post. I see no dominant strategy Bezos can choose that avoids the
Pyrrhic conclusion of his private photo being shared widely across the
Internet on services he helped create.

