[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.

[save_ferris]

It's just as easy to find legal experts who believe that this is chargeable[0]. Yes, it's not very clear-cut, but there's absolutely a case to be made that this amounted to extortion since AMI clearly insinuated that embarrassing images would be released if Bezos didn't play along.

As for the the value of the request, couldn't Bezos & co. argue that discovering the process and methods of how these private messages were obtained cause damage to AMI? Especially if the security expert he hired believed that a "government entity" may have been behind it.

[0]: https://twitter.com/eliehonig/status/1093868928345038848

[sigzero]

I am sure that Bezos lawyers think so

[jaabe]

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

[mannykannot]

More discussion on that, as well as on the possible implications for the publisher's immunity deal with respect to the matter of Karen McDougal and Donald Trump (if it was a crime, that deal is void), can be found here:

https://www.npr.org/2019/02/08/692823620/what-bezos-allegati...

[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.

[21]

The article explains why, because sometimes this kind of thing is needed and good:

> 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.

[xfitm3]

I think it’s murky enough to keep the enquirer in court for a long time.

[threeseed]

it doesn’t necessarily need to reach the level of extortion.

AMI has an agreement with the DOJ not to commit any crimes until 2021 lest they be charged for crimes stemming from the Trump porn star saga.

Question is did they commit any crime ?