Today's Evil Beet Gossip

Ronan Farrow says National Enquirer tried to blackmail him

(Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for GQ)

This week Jeff Bezos announced the National Enquirer was attempting to blackmail him with nude selfie they had in their possession. Now Ronan Farrow says the tabloid also attempted to blackmail him.

“I and at least one other prominent journalist involved in breaking stories about the National Enquirer’s arrangement with Trump fielded similar ‘stop digging or we’ll ruin you’ blackmail efforts from AMI,” Farrow tweeted Thursday evening.

“(I did not engage as I don’t cut deals with subjects of ongoing reporting.)”

Earlier Thursday, the Amazon CEO alleged that American Media Inc. — the Enquirer’s parent company — threatened to publish a nude photo of him if he didn’t stop investigating the magazine’s exposure of his affair and publicly declare that its reporting hadn’t been “politically motivated.”

AMI — which is run by David Pecker, a longtime pal of President Trump — has admitted to buying the rights to potentially embarrassing stories about the commander-in-chief in an effort to keep them from seeing the light of day.

In an April 2018 piece for The New Yorker, Farrow detailed the relationship between Pecker and Trump and said the magazine bought and buried stories to help his 2016 presidential campaign.