Does Jeff Bezos's post establish grounds for criminal charges? or a lawsuit?

THREAD: Did the National Enquirer and its parent company commit a crime or otherwise break the law in its recent actions towards Jeff Bezos? https://t.co/mPA0wwPZZB

— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) February 7, 2019

So where is the line between settlement negotiation and extortion? Turns out it's really complicated, as @renato_mariotti pointed out. It's been litigated a lot, as you would expect, in California, which is sort of the Florida of law.

This is a story of two cases. /1

— AccomplishedTheHat (@Popehat) February 8, 2019

Also:

#FLASHLOL - Guess where National Enquirer web services are hosted? That's right... AMAZON.

So @JeffBezos literally owns their infrastructure, and presumably... also their email servers / transport.

Yum.

— JΞSŦΞR ✪ ΔCŦUΔL³³º¹ (@th3j35t3r) February 8, 2019

And:

Bezos's response is actually a textbook example of how to respond to extortion. His consultant, Gavin de Becker, literally did write the textbook - here's the section on extortion from his book "The Gift of Fear": pic.twitter.com/Wt7JDNhBCl

— Leigh Honeywell (@hypatiadotca) February 8, 2019