Michael Sanchez, a gay Trump supporter and the brother of Jeff Bezos' mistress Lauren Sanchez, is behind the leak of Bezos' sexts to the National Enquirer, according to The Daily Beast, which built its report from multiple sources inside AMI.
The Daily Beast adds: ‘No one who spoke to The Daily Beast implied that Michael Sanchez in any way hacked his sister's phone, and he has not been charged with any crime. In fact, three people familiar with the Bezos-funded probe told The Daily Beast in late January that it had found no evidence of a hack. However, Bezos' investigators have strongly suspected Sanchez was the leaker since at least last week, according to two people familiar with the investigation. “There is no one inside this inquiry process who doesn't believe he's ground zero,” one of those sources said. Abramowitz, the AMI lawyer, appeared to confirm this in his Sunday interview, saying, “Any investigator that was going to investigate this knew who the source was.”'
Adds Jezebel: ‘Sanchez, who previously worked for MTV as its director of sales and marketing and is described by the Washington Post (which Bezos owns) as a “pro-Trump Hollywood talent manager who is also an acquaintance of provocative Trump backers Roger Stone and Carter Page” and a “typical West Hollywood gay man” by LGBTQNation (which notes he and his husband dressed as handbags for Halloween in 2017), has denied that he was the leaker and insisted to the Post that he wants “to clear my name by telling the truth.” He also told the Post that several people at the National Enquirer's parent company, American Media Inc., told him that the tabloid wants to do “a takedown to make Trump happy.”'
Elkan Abramowitz, who represents AMI CEO David Pecker, told George Stephanopoulos on ABC News' This Week that the source of the photos was well-known to both Bezos and Lauren Sanchez, denying that the Amazon CEO was blackmailed.
Said Abramowitz: “It absolutely is not extortion and not blackmail. The story was given to The National Enquirer by a reliable source that had been giving information to the National Enquirer for seven years prior to this story. It was a source that was well known to both Mr. Bezos and Miss [Lauren] Sanchez.
Asked by Stephanopoulos if Michael Sanchez was the source, Abramowitz replied: “I can't discuss who the source was. It's confidential within AMI, so I'm not going to answer who the source was. It was somebody close to both Bezos and Miss Sanchez.”
