SEATTLE (NYTIMES, REUTERS) - Jeff Bezos, Amazon's chief executive, accused the owner of The National Enquirer on Thursday (Feb 7) of trying "extortion and blackmail" to stop his investigation into how his private text messages and photos with his mistress were leaked to the tabloid.

In an extraordinarily personal online post, Mr Bezos said intermediaries of Mr David Pecker, chairman of American Media Inc (AMI), the owner of The Enquirer, had approached him to stop his investigation. Mr Bezos said he had been told that if he refused, the publisher would make risque and intimate photos of him and his mistress, Ms Lauren Sanchez, public.

Mr Bezos said AMI had wanted him to stop looking into it for political reasons. He pointed to the publisher's past cooperation with United States President Donald Trump, as well as its connections to the government of Saudi Arabia. Mr Bezos owns The Washington Post, which has relentlessly reported on the murder last year of its columnist Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident.

"Of course I don't want personal photos published, but I also won't participate in their well-known practice of blackmail, political favours, political attacks and corruption," Mr Bezos wrote of AMI, explaining why he had decided to speak out. "I prefer to stand up, roll this log over and see what crawls out."

Mr Bezos' online post details a stunning and bizarre clash between the world's richest man and the nation's biggest tabloid publisher. In it, all of the country's obsessions of recent years appear to have collided, from the personal lives of billionaires and sensational tabloid headlines to Mr Trump's fight with the media.

It has also shown that even for one of the world's most powerful tech titans and the owner of one of the country's most influential newspapers, the best means of communications can be a simple blog post. And in a time when Beltway pundits complain that the public has lost its capacity to be shocked, Mr Bezos' post did exactly that.

American Media Inc, the owner of the National Enquirer, said on Friday it acted lawfully in its reporting on Mr Bezos and that it would thoroughly investigate his claims of blackmail and take whatever action was necessary.

The confrontation began last month when Mr Bezos and his wife MacKenzie announced that they were getting divorced. The couple, who have been married for 25 years, disclosed their separation just before The Enquirer published an article exposing that Mr Bezos was having an affair with Ms Sanchez, a former television host who is also married.

The Enquirer article included text messages between Mr Bezos and Ms Sanchez, in which he wrote of his feelings for her and used endearments including "alive girl".

Mr Bezos, who has kept his personal life largely out of the public eye, said in his post that he had then quickly "engaged investigators to learn how those texts were obtained, and to determine the motives for the many unusual actions taken by The Enquirer". He said he had turned to Mr Gavin de Becker, his long-time private security consultant, for help.

In recent interviews, including with The Daily Beast and The Washington Post, Mr de Becker has said he was investigating whether Ms Sanchez's brother, who has said he supports Mr Trump, may have been behind the leak for political reasons.

Those who support the President may have been motivated to move against Mr Bezos since Mr Trump has long criticised the billionaire. Mr Trump has previously linked The Post and Amazon in critical Twitter posts, once declaring the "Fake Washington Post" a "lobbyist" for Amazon.

Mr de Becker did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In Mr Bezos' post on Thursday, he also published several e-mails between Mr de Becker's lawyer, Mr Martin Singer, and AMI's lawyer, Mr Jon Fine, and chief content officer, Mr Dylan Howard. The e-mails detail explicit photos The Enquirer had obtained of Mr Bezos and Ms Sanchez but hadn't run, and went on say AMI would not publish the photos if Mr Bezos stopped his investigation and publicly said he did not think the leak had been politically motivated.

In one e-mail that Mr Bezos disclosed, Mr Howard wrote that The Enquirer had obtained photos of Mr Bezos and Ms Sanchez as part of its "news-gathering". Included, Mr Howard wrote, were photos that showed Ms Sanchez simulating an oral sex scene and Mr Bezos clad in just a white towel.

"Nothing I might write here could tell the National Enquirer story as eloquently as their own words," Mr Bezos wrote of releasing the e-mails.

He added that any personal embarrassment from the revelations took "a back seat because there's a much more important matter involved here".

"If in my position I can't stand up to this kind of extortion," he wrote, "how many people can?"

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos shared several e-mail exchanges in his blog post on Thursday. Here is an excerpt of one e-mail from American Media Inc chief content officer Dylan Howard to Martin Singer, the lawyer of Bezos' long-time private security consultant Gavin de Becker.

Marty:

I am leaving the office for the night. I will be available on my cell - 917 XXX-XXXX.

However, in the interests of expediating this situation, and with The Washington Post poised to publish unsubstantiated rumors of The National Enquirer's initial report, I wanted to describe to you the photos obtained during our newsgathering.

In addition to the "below the belt selfie - otherwise colloquially known as a 'd*** pick'" - The Enquirer obtained a further nine images. These include:

· Mr Bezos face selfie at what appears to be a business meeting.

· Ms Sanchez response - a photograph of her smoking a cigar in what appears to be a simulated oral sex scene.

· A shirtless Mr Bezos holding his phone in his left hand - while wearing his wedding ring. He's wearing either tight black cargo pants or shorts.

· A full-length body selfie of Mr Bezos wearing just a pair of tight black boxer-briefs or trunks, with his phone in his left hand - while wearing his wedding ring.

· A selfie of Mr Bezos fully clothed.

· A full-length scantily-clad body shot with short trunks.

· A naked selfie in a bathroom - while wearing his wedding ring. Mr Bezos is wearing nothing but a white towel - and the top of his pubic region can be seen.

· Ms Sanchez wearing a plunging red neckline dress revealing her cleavage and a glimpse of her nether region.

· Ms Sanchez wearing a two-piece red bikini with gold detail dress revealing her cleavage.

It would give no editor pleasure to send this email. I hope common sense can prevail - and quickly.

Dylan.