Coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces. Its raising questions about whether ami violated the terms. A nonprosecution agreement reached with federal prosecutors last year over a hushmoney payment to help Donald Trumps prospects in the 2016 election. The agreement requires ami to commit to crimes to commit no crimes whatsoever for three years. If ami breaks the terms of the deal, it could be charged with Campaign Finance violations. Federal prosecutors are now reviewing whether the company violated the agreement according to a person familiar with the investigation. Amis chief executive, david pecker, is a longtime friend. Donald trump. Adding aiding his campaign by burying stories during the 2016 campaign and publishing articles adverse to trumps opponents. Trump himself has berated bezos on twitter, going after amazon and criticizing the Washington Post coverage for months. He said this after bezos divorce was announced last month how do you react to this jeff bezoss divorce and affairs . I wish him luck. I wish him luck. Its going to be a beauty. Joining me is maya wiley, senior vp for social justice. George butler, professor at georgetown bar school. Kurt bardella, usa today skribtor and former spokesperson for the House Oversight committee. Author of its even wars than you think. And author of the plot to destroy democracy. Im going to start with what was in the extraordinary post. Anyone who read through it, basically, first of all, trying to blackmail the richest man in the world, like what is he what does he have to lose . He was like, publish the photos. Let me tell you everything thats in japanethese photos or everything that you said. They describe what the photos are say and if you dont comply and continue to be obedient basically forever and keep telling the story that our coverage of you was not political motivated, these details that im going to describe in detail, are going to come out. He publishes them in detail. Could this what you saw be a crime, could it be exportion, and could that extortion, and could that violate the agreement ami has with the special prosecutor . Absolutely. Breaking this down, right, if theres if the federal crime is that you essentially threaten someone in exchange for a thing of value. Right. The thing of value some lawyers will debate whether or not this crosses the line. Yep. Because were so used to thing of value being property or money. Yep. But reputation is a thing of value. Right. And thats the issue here. And yes, and bezos i think was also clear if i dont draw the line, who can. Thats right. Because i am in a position to protect myself in ways that so many others cant. I think going back to your point about the agreement is so significant because it is absolutely making the company vulnerable because they had three years, as long as they kept their nose clean. Right. And they apparently this is such an embedded business practice. It is such an embedded business practice that they were unable to do it, and thats why we have people like ronan faro and others saying they did it to us, too. I was just going to go there. Let me read the response from am mi, American Media believes it acted fervently in reporting on mr. Bezos at the time of the allegations made, it was in good faith negotiations to resolve all matters with him. Nonetheless, in light of the nature of the allegations published by mr. Bezos, the board has determined it should promptly and thoroughly investigate the claims. Paul butler, theyre going to thoroughly investigate, but they apparently did this in writing. I mean, they they committed their demands in writing, emailed them, hit send, to the richest man in the world. Hes going to get fired hoe owns the company. Now you he owns the company. Now you have journalists, ronan farrow, who said, i and at least one other prominent journalist involved in breaking stories about the National Enquirers arrangement with trump, meaning the catchandkill arrangement, fielded similar stop digging or well ruin you emails from ami. Did not engage as i do not cut deals with subjects of ongoing reportin repo reporting. He got a reply from the former a. P. Editor who says, we were warned explicitly by insiders, his name is ted beardis, ami hired investigators to dig into the backgrounds of a. P. Journalists looking into the tabloids efforts on behalf of trump. Never saw evidence of this either way, and it didnt stopt our reporting. This is a common business practice. If this is something they do on a regular basis, does this establish a pattern that could be deemed extortion . Extortion, blackmail, threats, in the case of bezos giving what they were threatening to reveal, even revenge porn. If a School Yard Bully says to a kid, if you dont do my homework, im going to beat you up, or a mob boss says to a storeowner, im going to collect 1,000 a week or theres going to be trouble, thats extortion. At least the bully and the mob boss have the good sense not to do it in email and text messages. And so yes, this is a violation of the nonprosecution agreement because ami was supposed to stay out of trouble for three years. Apparently that was too much for them to do. Theyve tried in the past to hide behind the First Amendment saying that theyre a media organization. But the Southern District probe has already exposed them as a criminal enterprise and as a partisan organization. Theyve admitted in open court that they tried to help donald trump get elected by using Campaign Financing and violating that law. Its pretty amazing, kurt. This is a new normal in terms of politics being completely off the rails. Almost like a dystopian novel or like a marvel comic version of of politics right now. Jeff bezos in this medium piece which is called no, thank you, mr. Pecker, very in your face, he wrote, its unavoidable that powerful people experience Washington PostNews Coverage will wrongly concludes that im their enemy. President trump is one of these people. Obviously for his by his many tweets. Also the posts essential and unrelenting coverage of the murders of Jamal Khashoggi is undoubtedly unpopular in certain circl circles. That was a red flag, too. We know that ami, that david pecker, may have been in pursuit of some deals with the saudis and money from saudi arabia. That was sort of a tell. This type of, you know, dont report x or well expose these photos that we got from the cloud from you or whatever, this is a new normal it seems in our politics. Oh, blackmail, extortion and it shows that any of these like ami, theyre not media or news outlets. Thats not journalism. Theyre Political Action committees with a specific political agenda. They should be treated as such. The First Amendment protections that we see traditional outlets have, they should not be privy to those. No journalistic entity would do that, theyre not going to blackmail somebody, put it in writing, and go after the worlds richest human being. This is Something Congress needs to look at, was there a nexus, communication between the Trump Administration, the trump white house, and ami as this bezos story unfolded. Trump has tweeted repeatedly many, many attacks against bezos. And hes revelled in any type of controversy hes come under like the clip where he says its going to be beautiful. Did he have any inside information . Was he asking his good buddy, his good friend to go after one of his political enemies . And if so, the American People deserve to know that, and congress should investigate it. Lets go to david kidd johnson on that. We know about the relationship, we know where the catchandkill agreements to either put out to bury stories about potential Sexual Affairs by donald trump and also that there were negative stories, nasty stories about his political enemies published in the national enquirer. What is this relationship about . Well, donald has long had other people investigated to try and so how get them to back off. He did it to me. And the whole model here is one of, as weve been discussing, extortion. Of suppressing news. A lot of things ive written about donald trump in my biography, the making of donald trump, theyre not in the news for reasons that in some cases have to do with his threatening news organizations, if they touched those stories, even though theyre in the public record. And in the past, journalists who have committed extortion like this go to jail. Harry fairington at the national enquirer, the annenburg Media Centers today, he went to prison for extortion saying ill keep this story out of the news if you pay me. And he died in prison. Wow. Its almost sounds like a mob story. Very weird. I want to go to malcolm on a little bit more about the how this sort of came about. We had jeff bezos says in his media post that he was sparing no expense having hired Gavin Debecker try to figure out where did the texts come from, and how the photos ended up in the hands of the national enquirer. There are all sorts of strange stories about it. I interviewed manuel roy francia of the Washington Post on i dont know if this was my interview or on last word, but he was talking about that. Take a listen. I would add one other thing. You mentioned hacking at the top of the show. Gavin de becker told us he does not believe that jeff bezos phone was hacked. He thinks its possible that a Government Entity might have gotten hold of his text messages. That was intriguing because you over the course of this story unfolding, there have been names of other countries sort of thrown on the table, people have talked about maybe even, you know, the israeli mass ad getting them or a foreign entity or mi6 or something getting these the contents of jeff bezos phone and handing it over somehow to the national enquirer. What do you make of that . Ill tell you right off the bat, it is not the National Security agency. It is not a u. S. Government agency that would do this. We just dont have the we have the capacity. We can do anything if its electronic. But this story ive given this quite a bit of thought. There is a possibility that there was a Foreign Government who had foreign intelligence subcontractors like you recently heard about the project raven group that was in abu dhabi where i lived who used exnsa personnel, you have companies that operate out of israel who could come into the United States and do a special collection so to speak using the right software, the right techniques. But you know, the easiest way is to do, you know, what we used to call a black bag job, get a relative of the target, not jeff bezos, perhaps, you know, the young woman in question who was in the relationship and her brother, just to get near her and can social engineer her to turn on her airdrop function on her iphone or look at her phone for a minute and allow another group to gain access to that phone using sophisticated software. Then that phone is essentially theirs. Whatever she receives from jeff bezos, they have. It is much more likely that its a Foreign Group who have operated illicitly in the United States, but could it be subcontractors of the governor of saudi arabia or israel or another country . Absolutely. Whats intriguing is that you have this other thing happening, this weird, glossy tabloid, that was put out by ami that was praising the government of saudi arabia and praising the crown prince. Theres that data point, and then theres the reported protrump leanings of the woman who woman who jeff bezos was in the affair with of her brother. Does that tell you we should be looking in saudi arabias direction . I think at this point with ami, you can rely on that its going to have multiple data points of people who have animosity toward jeff bezos. They all came together like kismet. And this operation was carried out in order to get that blackmail information to extort them. Could it be saudi arabia . Its possible. The saudis put out an adverti advertisement where nay said literally they have drawn a red line in criticism of the leadership of saudi arabia with the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Putting a warning out to all Media Worldwide that they will take this seriously. If thats the way theyre doing operations look, theyre trilli trillionaires, they would spare no expense to damage somebody looking into their affairs. Sorry were out of time, maya, kurt, paul will be back. David, malcolm, thank you very much. Really an intriguing story. Coming up, if you were trumps acting attorney general and youre feeling super mighty proud about how you tried to bully congressional democrats, where might you go to celebrate . Well tell you next. You next. In your capacity as acting attorney general, have you ever been asked to approve any request or action to be taken by the special counsel . Mr. Chairman, i seeia your five minutes is up, and so [ laughter ] we im here voluntarily. We have agreed to fiveminute rounds. And thats a fine place to end the fiveminute rule. Wow. If youre trumps guy at the Justice Department, how do you celebrate owning the libs on the House Judiciary Committee . You go to trump hotel, of course. Hours after acting attorney general Matt Whitakers heated, combative, often dismissive testimony, he was spotted at trumps d. C. Hotel. The one trump leases from the federal government that he also runs. Whitakers choice of dining venue wont do much, the more that his testimony did, to ease democratic concerns that hes little more than a hack sent in to protect donald trump from the mueller investigation. On friday whitaker spent hours repeatedly clashing with democrats who were probing his actions as attorney general. And while he did deny ever interfering in muellers investigation or speaking with donald trump about his feelings about the probe, wlirk did not address whitaker did not address the skepticism that he voiced on cnn, twitter, and opeds which seems like an addition for team trump. He refused to answer whether he currently believes as trump does that the Mueller Probe is, quote, a witch hunt. There have been Guilty Police from flynn, gates, papadopoulos and roger stone and three companies. Would you say the special counsels investigation is a witch hunt . Are you interfere seeing a witch hunt . Congressman, as ive mentioned previously, the special counsels investigation is ongoing. I think it would be inappropriate for me to you wouldnt oversee a witch hunt. You would stop a witch hunt, wouldnt you . Congressman it would be inappropriate for me to talk about an ongoing investigation. Maya and kurt are back with me. Go anywhere you want, but the disrespect shown to the committee was one piece. People were saying unprecedented the way he behaved. Then going for a secelebratory dinner at the trump hotel which an emoluments question. The hotel even existed. The connection between the i want to make a link, please. Please do. Its very important. Put your five minutes are up i mean, what was this . Rude, inappropriate, and demonstrating why you need a confirmation hearing from someone whos going to be an acting attorney general. You should not never able to behave like that in a group that we did have a Supreme Court scream and cry at the committee and get confirmed. Unfortunately theres a pattern here. Yeah. But the connection between these two things is remember that whitaker has the ability to interfere with the Southern District of new yorks investigation of bezos. We havent these stories havent come together quite the same way because they were breaking around the same time. Remember that he is, whitaker is asked the question about whether he has interfewer efeared in interfered in the sdnys investigation into michael cohen. He refuses to answer the question. We know the investigation exists. You cant say i cant confirm or deny the existence of an investigation which is true which is true. But fli case its public records, there are public court filings. Theres flow question theres investigations. You can answer that question. Sectly, secondly, he has the ability, hes not out of the job yet. We know that sdny is going to not just reopen not just the issue of whether or not to prosecute ami for the Campaign Finance crimes. Right. Now the question is what is ami doing in its Business Practices around extortion, and whose benefit, whose benefit . Right now everything we know about ami is everything theyve done is to benefit donald trump. Donald trump. Whitaker, who literally thanks to sam clovis, becomes a cnn legal analyst in order to get the attention of the Trump Administration for a job, and in august, 2017, calls the Mueller Probe the Mueller Lynch mob. And refuses to do even what william barr was willing to do which is to say this is not a witch hunt, there are real questions now. He even if he doesnt interfere with the Mueller Probe, he could interfere with the sdny probe of ami . Goodness. Now do i think he will . It would be very stupid. And i think the way to hear that his testimony and going over to the hotel after is he was it was a job interview. It was an interview for his next job. Yeah. I just say that to see this is the depth of concern we should have as a country about how our institutions of government are are being twisted. Paul butler, there is okay, it gets even scarier it turns out. Thats the point, right . Theyre acting as if theyre just in a movie, a tv show, that none of the rule of law or the patterns of behavior or the more