WASHINGTON _ Prosecutors in New York on Friday began looking into whether the National Enquirer's parent company violated a cooperation agreement with the government in its dealings with Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, sources told the Los Angeles Times.
The move comes a day after Bezos publicly accused the Enquirer of extortion and blackmail by threatening to publish intimate photographs of him and former Los Angeles TV news anchor Lauren Sanchez unless he stopped an investigation into how the supermarket tabloid got his private messages.
Two sources familiar with the review but not authorized to discuss it said federal prosecutors with the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York are now examining Bezos' allegations and, if true, whether they violated an agreement forbidding the paper's parent company from committing a crime for three years.
That agreement was struck as part of a decision not to charge the company for allegations that it violated campaign finance laws related to payments aimed at suppressing negative news about Donald Trump in advance of the 2016 election.
Bezos' lawyers told the Times they have not yet been contacted by authorities.
Sanchez lives in the Los Angeles area. Local law enforcement officials said Friday they have not received any crime report from Bezos.
The Enquirer's parent company, American Media Inc., said Friday it acted lawfully while reporting on the story about Bezos and Sanchez. The publisher said it would investigate whether the communications that Bezos published Thursday on Medium amounted to a threat and how the tabloid got the messages.
The Enquirer has generally been seen as an ally of Trump. AMI Chairman David Pecker is a longtime supporter of the president, who has repeatedly criticized the Amazon founder and owner of The Washington Post.
In December, AMI accepted responsibility under a nonprosecution agreement for its role in a $150,000 payment to silence former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal about her alleged affair with Trump before the election.
As part of the deal, the company admitted its purpose was to suppress the woman's story and prevent it from influencing the election. According to the agreement with AMI, Trump's longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, and another campaign official met with Pecker about the scheme in August 2015.
