US Politics February 2019: This is one of the great losers of all time.

seriously. at the very least, it takes cojones to pick a fight with a trillionaire.

it's amazing that AMI's communications are filled with legalese ("under code such and such...") but it's plain as day that the dynamic here is that of blackmail. the "we will have no choice but to..." phrasing is chilling.

wowza

I know his policy positions are not great across the board, but Adam Schuff is very sharp and I'm glad he's running the Intelligence Committee: http://americablog.com/2019/02/podcast-rep-adam-schiff-talks-trump-russia.html

er, I mean Schiff

"we will have no choice but to" is what the mysteriously-accented guy (probably played by John Lithgow) says in that movie where he's holding a phone up to his ear while in the background you see the protagonist's wife writhing while gagged and bound to a chair.

I'm guessing they're shameless about it because they do it routinely and suffer zero consequences

This alleged extortionate conduct by AMI is, among other things, intensely embarrassing to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York. And it is not advisable to be intensely embarrassing to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) February 7, 2019

that is insane.

anything that fucks with The Enquirer is cool by me

[polishes guillotine]

And if you'd like some context for that southpaw post:

Excellent point. There has been public reporting that Trump pushed Whitaker to control prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. https://t.co/Z6taA1mCUu

— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) February 7, 2019

I am super offended that they spelled it "dick pick" and they put "manhood" in an extortion email.

dick pick is a partner at their firm.

(yeah, i said "firm")

What a day. https://t.co/kQcZ42SSDo pic.twitter.com/FFDS0W3Hm4

— Lydia Polgreen (@lpolgreen) February 7, 2019

From the AMI nonprosecution agreement. https://t.co/vsGdEVoqN3 pic.twitter.com/OjdYhXixky

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) February 7, 2019

someone wanna sum this up for me I'm not scrolling through all that

like, is Pecker going to jail now or something cuz I could use some good news

• Jeff Bezos sent dick pics to his mistress
• The National Enquirer got a hold of them and tried to blackmail Bezos in connection with his ownership of the Washington Post
• Bezos went public about the blackmail
• I was forced yet again to think about the dick of a powerful Seattleite

will never understand why anyone sends a dick pic tbh

Section D

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/875

will never understand why anyone sends a dick pic tbh

― legislative fanboy halfwit (Οὖτις), Thursday, February 7, 2019 3:49 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so that someone will know what ur dick looks like, duh

Of COURSE it is Section D

so that someone will know what ur dick looks like, duh

― Norm’s Superego (silby), Thursday, February 7, 2019 11:57 PM (forty seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

take a creative writing class instead

so that someoneany number of randoms will know what ur dick looks like, duh

feature not a bug

like if you really think it's important that ppl know what yr dick looks like just whip it out, stop being coy or pretending like only that one person you sent it to is going to see it because duh how stupid are you? (stupid enough to think ppl wanna know what yr dick looks like, evidently)

Of course. OF COURSE.

how pic.twitter.com/5KWZblu9Lb

— who the fuck is scraeming "LOG OFF" at my house. (@herkzzz) February 7, 2019

love that Bezos didn't bother to redact email and phone #s for AMI's attorneys.

And BTW

Two amazing stories just broke and both involve Saudi Arabia's political influence in this country. 1) Apparently National Enquirer/AMI blackmailed Bezos trying to protect its ties to SA 2) U.S, intel has proof that MBS wanted to kill Post's Khashoggi https://t.co/kgpjU66EDk

— Will Bunch (@Will_Bunch) February 7, 2019

will never understand why anyone sends a dick pic tbh

― legislative fanboy halfwit (Οὖτις)

I think people whose dating and courtship careers predate the widespread use of mobile phones / camera phones / text messaging etc. (Like, say, me) will have a harder time (npi) understanding the prevalence of such practices.

well yeah

jesus christ wtf

Nobody on Trump's side need worry about any flack from SDNY. Didn't they effectively declare their allegiance to Trump in Oct 2016 with their pressure on Comey to publicly connect the Weiner files to the Hillary emails?

Hahah no, things have rather changed at this point.

Are the Weiner files what I think they are?

Mariotti with the thread:

THREAD: Did the National Enquirer and its parent company commit a crime or otherwise break the law in its recent actions towards Jeff Bezos? https://t.co/mPA0wwPZZB

— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) February 7, 2019

xps Bnad - no, that was the FBI's NY field office. The SDNY is very much a threat to Trump and co.

Interesting interview from Burr re the Senate Intelligence Committee's work.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/richard-burr-on-senate-intelligence-committees-russia-investigation-2-years-on/

My my

A source familiar with the matter tells me that Lavely & Singer, Marty Singer's law firm, did not know in advance that Bezos would be posting this essay. Nor did they know that Bezos would be publishing the threatening emails that AMI sent them.

They found out when we did..wow. https://t.co/dO7jADseG0

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) February 7, 2019

Bezos’s investigator in this is the guy who wrote gift of fear

Haha that figures. A certain VP at AWS was and presumably still is obsessed with that book.

Not unrelated.

In his note, Jeff Bezos mentions a guy named Gavin de Becker; I interviewed de Becker for @TheAtlantic, profiling a new anti-terrorism unit at LAX. Dude is serious business—he has an entire airplane fuselage for training against assassination attempts. https://t.co/A52RyoZch7 pic.twitter.com/wty0Pmbnhj

— Geoff Manaugh (@bldgblog) February 8, 2019

Hahah look who caved

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/house-panel-authorizes-subpoena-for-acting-attorney-general-whitaker-just-in-case/2019/02/07/1e5ec47a-2af2-11e9-b011-d8500644dc98_story.html

while this could be just another instance of a trump person dragging their feet just to be a dick about it, there is every indication that this shady AG has shit to hide, or at the very least will do a poor job hiding it under oath.

Bezos's response is actually a textbook example of how to respond to extortion. His consultant, Gavin de Becker, literally did write the textbook - here's the section on extortion from his book "The Gift of Fear": pic.twitter.com/Wt7JDNhBCl

— Leigh Honeywell (@hypatiadotca) February 8, 2019

it's hard to make me sympathetic to jeff bezos, who basically starves his employees to make billions, Gilded Age style, but this has almost done it.

I dont feel a smidge of sympathy for him but I do admire his balls.

...er, in a manner of speaking.

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2019/02/07/john-dingell-michigan-dies-obituary/1339577002/?#_=_