The bizarre drama behind the story of Jeff Bezos’ extramarital affair is about to get even weirder. A shady figure affiliated with National researcher claims in court that one of the most powerful players in Hollywood provided the supermarket tabloid with the sordid details of the adventure.
After Bezos announced in 2018 that he is breaking up with Mackenzie Bezos, his 25-year-old wife, National researcher revealed that the richest man in the world was having an affair with Lauren Sanchez, a California television host and pilot. The supermarket tabloid series about the business – which included bold text messages and suggestive photos between Bezos and Sanchez – sparked a bizarre and widespread public hunt for the source or sources of information, led by Michael Sanchez, now Sanchez’s estranged brother. directors at Investigator parent company American Media Inc. and even the Saudi government.
Now, Nikolaos Tzima Hatziefstathiou, a journalist with a strange and disturbing criminal history, who reported the story to National researcher and AMI (hereinafter referred to as “A360 Media”), claims that a major source of information was Lauren Sanchez’s then-husband, William Morris Endeavor director Patrick Whitesell.
Hatziefstathiou’s accusations are part of a defamation lawsuit filed by Michael Sanchez against AMI this year, claiming that the tabloid press lied when it overtook him as the only source of information about the Bezos affair.
In a statement on his own account filed by Michael Sanchez’s legal team, Hatziefstathiou claimed that AMI’s senior vice president, Dylan Howard, had appointed him to look into Bezos’ business after Whitesell, Endeavor’s chief executive, relationship talent agencies in the world.
Hatziefstathiou said the deal was a convenient excuse for the Endeavor executive to end his marriage, but AMI intended to protect him as a source.
Mr. Whitesell discovered the business and, serving as AMI’s secret and undisclosed source, literally turned the business into a “free divorce card exit,” allowing him to leave his wife … through a planned divorce. previously, in which he appeared without guilt and scandal – free of charge, just a few months before the initial public offer planned by WME “, Hatziefstathiou wrote in the file.
Representatives for Howard and AMI / A360 did not immediately return comments.
“This is definitely untrue, and unfortunately this is not the first time we have seen this desperate attempt by Michael Sanchez to perpetuate this strange and tiring circus,” Patrick Whitesell’s spokesman told The Daily Beast. “The fact that Patrick was involved in this bizarre series of trials and incriminations is a direct result of the character of those involved and is completely disconnected from reality. Any suggestion to the contrary is malicious and slanderous. ”
In Hatziefstathiou’s 2020 resignation letter from AMI, which is included in the week’s filing, he wrote that the company included “blatant lies” in its court cases related to the Bezos case, saying that AMI misleads the courts about source of information.
But the former AMI journalist himself has a dubious history of legal issues that could color the court’s view on its reliability and veracity. In 2019, he was charged with 20 criminal charges for a bizarre scam in which he posed as a journalist from New York Times and Good Morning America and created a fake racist email claiming to be from an adult probation and conditioning officer in Delaware County.
As the Philly Voice noted, he previously pleaded guilty to calling law enforcement to report a disturbance to his neighbor’s home after sending dozens of prostitutes there and being told by a judge not to watch movies about cops after trying to set up a drug dealer for the police.
Much of Hatziefstathiou’s testimony this week is somewhat disturbing in defending his own personal conduct and the details of his reporting on the Bezos affair. In addition, while Hatziefstathiou claims that Whitesell was involved, the submission did not include any exhibits beyond his own testimony, clearly linking the WME executive to AMI.
However, Hatziefstathiou stated in the filing that it has an additional “ten terabytes” of data consisting of one million documents about AMI and its coverage of the Bezos business to support its claims.
The question of who disclosed information about Bezos’ business to AMI and Investigator launched a years-long hunt, involving some of the darkest players in the world of tabloid journalism, entertainment and corporate espionage. In 2019, The Daily Beast reported for the first time that Michael Sanchez was the source of AMI for the steamy text messages between his sister and Bezos, a revelation of Investigator confirmed later.
In a court that filed in July last year – the motion of the AMI to reject the trial of Michael Sanchez and to sanction him for the alleged abuse of the judiciary – investigator the parent company included a cache of emails, text messages and affidavits from AMI employees who tended to touch Sanchez as a source of salacious stories. Court documents painted a picture of Sanchez as a disloyal brother eager to sell his married sister and secret billionaire boyfriend.
Finally, AMI agreed to pay Sanchez $ 200,000, according to the July 2020 file, for “information, photos and text messages documenting an affair between Bezos and L. Sanchez.” It was, as it turned out, a lost proposal. Last month, after a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge dismissed Michael Sanchez’s separate defamation suit against Bezos and his security consultant Gavin de Becker, Sanchez was forced to pay the billionaire $ 218,385 for Bezos’ legal costs.
Meanwhile, the AMI court file contained chronological inconsistencies, raising questions about investigator the original source, which is presented in detail in the statement that Hatziefstathiou claims that Hollywood power agent Whitesell was the one who first alerted the tabloid about the Bezos-Sanchez relationship.
The text messages, provided by Michael Sanchez, were not the only salacious evidence of the business from investigator holding. Sanchez also claimed that he was not the only source of AMI, a theory that seemed to be shared by Bezos’ camp.
In a long 2019 column for The Daily Beast, Gavin de Becker, Bezos ‘chief security consultant, wrote that his investigation ended with “great confidence” that “the Saudis have access to Bezos’ phone and obtained private information. . As of today, it is unclear to what extent, if any, AMI was aware of the details. “United Nations experts later gave credence to these statements.
While he suggested that the Saudis have access to Bezos’ phone, de Becker publicly wondered why AMI itself seemed almost intent on removing Michael Sanchez as investigator source. “What was unusual, very unusual, was how hard the AMI people worked to publicly reveal the identity of their source,” he wrote. “First through strong suggestions they gave me, and later through direct statements, AMI practically fixed a” kick me “sign on Michael Sanchez.”
Bezos wrote in a mid-2019 post that AMI was trying to “blackmail” him, saying the media company threatened to publish a “selfie under the belt” – otherwise known colloquially as a “d * ck pick”. [sic]”, Unless the Washington Post stopped investigating the leak.
“Any personal embarrassment that AMI can cause me sits on my back because this is a much more important issue,” Bezos wrote. “If in my position I can’t resist this type of extortion, how many people can I?”