[thaumasiotes]

Assuming Jeff Bezos' quotes of their emails are accurate, it seems like a pretty open-and-shut case of criminal blackmail. I looked at Wikipedia's tiny entry for "blackmail in the United States", and it is definitely not federal blackmail. I looked at the state of Washington's legal code... ( https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9A.56.110 )

WA defines "extortion" pretty sparely as "knowingly to obtain or attempt to obtain by threat property or services of the owner, and specifically includ[ing] sexual favors". It is a class C felony when the threat is "(e) To expose a secret or publicize an asserted fact, whether true or false, tending to subject any person to hatred, contempt, or ridicule; or (f) To reveal any information sought to be concealed by the person threatened". (see https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9A.56.130 )

So it seems pretty safe to say that AMI's behavior is a class C felony under Washington law _if_, by making the threat, they were attempting to obtain any "services" from Jeff Bezos. What did they ask for?

> 1. A full and complete mutual release of all claims that American Media, on the one hand, and Jeff Bezos and Gavin de Becker (the “Bezos Parties”), on the other, may have against each other.

> 2. A public, mutually-agreed upon acknowledgment from the Bezos Parties, released through a mutually-agreeable news outlet, affirming that they have no knowledge or basis for suggesting that AM’s coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces, and an agreement that they will cease referring to such a possibility.

(see https://medium.com/@jeffreypbezos/no-thank-you-mr-pecker-146... )

I don't see how this could fail to be criminal. Getting someone to do what you want by threatening to print embarrassing pictures of them is the prototype for the crime of blackmail.

[tptacek]

See response below. Renato Mariotti is an expert, as is Ken White, who concurs (and also provides a further analysis of the case law on this).

[thaumasiotes]

I'm quoting from Renato Mariotti's thread here:

> 10/ What is extortion? Typically it's when someone demands money in exchange for keeping something embarrassing private. While we ordinarily have a First Amendment right to say whatever we please, it can be a crime to threaten to say something unless money is paid.

> 15/ To make this out as an extortion case, prosecutors would have to argue that the claims Bezos had against AMI constituted "money or property" of Bezos and that the whole settlement proposal was merely window dressing for the extortion of Bezos by AMI.

But that is nonsense when compared to Washington's legal code, which specifically defines "extortion" to include demands for "services [...] includ[ing] sexual favors". I feel confident that sexual favors and other services are neither money nor property.

[tptacek]

You've left out the tweet immediately preceding 15:

14/ Was AMI's action slimy? Yes.

Is it consistent with some of the questionable practices that AMI engaged in on behalf of Trump and others? Yes.

But is this the sort of case federal prosecutors would charge as extortion? No.

[thaumasiotes]

I already said that AMI's conduct does not appear to be federal blackmail. I didn't look at federal extortion at all.

But I'm making a claim about the law of Washington, not federal law.