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Jeff Bezos only announced his split from his wife of 25 years, Mackenzie Bezos, because the National Enquirer was about to publish their extensive report on his affair with Lauren Sanchez. The Enquirer had put in the leg work – they assigned four people to the Bezos-affair story, and they had photos, copies of text messages, dates and locations all nailed down. The thing about the text messages was pretty interesting though, because no one is 100% sure how the Enquirer got their hands on the “sexts” between Sanchez and Bezos.

Initially, Page Six got a tip that Lauren Sanchez “sent the sexts to a friend to show off about her relationship with the world’s richest man — and then the pal slipped the texts to the Enquirer.” If true, Lauren Sanchez is incredibly indiscreet AND she had to know that she was basically pressuring her married lover to leave his wife (which happened, so she got what she wanted). The leak of the sexts has become a focal point for Bezos – he’s “launched an inquiry” to see how the text messages and photos got leaked. Huh.

Amazon boss Jeff Bezos has launched an inquiry to find out how the National Enquirer got hold of his racy text messages to girlfriend Lauren Sanchez, the Daily Beast reports. Earlier this month, the tabloid published the contents of lovey-dovey messages from the billionaire to his married new squeeze and reported that he had sent her nude pictures of himself.

Now, the Beast reports that Bezos is funding an inquiry into the leak — and is “increasingly convinced that political motives are behind the disclosure.” It says that the probe has so far ruled out the possibility his phone was hacked, and investigators have “not uncovered evidence” that Sanchez was involved in the leak.

However, when the Enquirer story was published, sources close to its reporting operation told Page Six that the tab had got hold of the texts because Sanchez had “loose lips” and shared them with pals. On Wednesday, Enquirer insiders said they stuck by that claim. Meanwhile, the Daily Beast says that Bezos’ investigators believe that because the story showed up in the National Enquirer it suggests that it’s a right-wing hatchet job on the liberal Bezos (who owns the Washington Post). They point out that the Enquirer has long been an ally of President Trump.

But a source told us that this theory is just a weird conspiracy. The relationship between Trump and the tabloid was seriously tested last year after its chairman, David Pecker, was granted immunity to testify in the investigation into whether the Enquirer paid Playmate Karen McDougal to stop her from claiming that she had an affair with Trump.

[From Page Six]

I initially thought the political dimension of the story was shady as hell – Trump regularly insults Bezos on Twitter, and Trump even made several on-camera references to Jeff Bezos’ marriage problems. But then the idea that Sanchez inadvertently (or not so much) leaked the texts took hold and I focused more on that theory. Could it be that my first instincts were correct? The sheer volume of texts and photos between Bezos and Sanchez, all of which the Enquirer had access to, seems to indicate that this was more than just “Sanchez showing some texts to a friend and that friend passing them on to the Enquirer.” There are basically only two options, in my view. Option #1: the National Enquirer hacked Bezos or they worked with someone else to hack Bezos, and they did so for political reasons, because Trump believes Bezos is his political enemy. Option #2: Lauren Sanchez wanted to get Bezos to dump his wife so she found a way to leak their messages to the Enquirer directly or through a third party. Which is it? Bezos will find out.

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Photos courtesy of Getty.