Straight Dope Message Board

[Snowboarder Bo]

And gee, look, AMI is based in New York City, NY, and Boca Raton, FL!

[Chronos]

I'm looking forward to seeing how the lawyers try to squirm out from under those state charges.

[Maastricht]

Lets skip ahead a year and suppose AMI is tried and found guilty and convicted. How does that look? Is the corporation guilty? Corporations can only pay fines, they can’t go to jail. Are natural persons owning the corporation, or profiting from it ( shareholders) or working with it, ( employees) or for it, ( hired lawyers) fined or going to jail?

[kaylasdad99]

Originally Posted by Ann Hedonia

Let’s see. An entertainment magazine got a hold of embarrassing naked pictures of the owner of a major news outlet, and threatened to release those pictures unless the major news outlet changed its reporting and printed lies for dissemination to the American public. Furthermore, there is reason to believe this action was coordinated with people in the highest levels of government, in part to cover up the murder of a reporter by a sovereign government, a government with business ties to the entertainment magazine.

And there is debate over whether this is illegal or even wrong or even bad? Just how far down the rabbit hole have we fallen?

But to answer your question, the non-prosecution document clearly says that can be questioned about absolutely anything for the next 3 years, they don’t have to prove a connection to the existing campaign finance case. And if we’ve learned anything in the past few years, it’s that federal prosecutors are hard-assed about pretty much everything.

And I don’t think it will look like they are working on behalf of Bezos. I don’t think enough attention is being paid to the “they were trying to force a major news outlet to print lies” part of the scandal. The American people were the intended victims.

This article has an interesting slant, the author points out that AMI’s actions are clearly criminal at the state level in both NY and FL. In NY it’s 2nd degree coercion, in FL it’s threats extortion. Neither of those laws has a requirement regarding “thing of value”,and they both fit the current situation perfectly.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/201...-SDNY-with-AMI

And the prosecution agreement doesn’t specify federal crimes, so committing state crimes would violate the agreement.

Okay, thanks. That puts my mind at ease, wrt Pecker and Dildo being able to wriggle out of this one.

And eschereal, we’d been given to understand that there was a persuasive, if not convincing, argument for characterizing this as a civil matter (more so than a mugging would be); I was concerned about the bad guys being in a position to spin prosecutorial pursuit as a politically-motivated “favor” to Bezos.

Not that I don’t expect them to anyway.

[Manda JO]

Originally Posted by Maastricht

Lets skip ahead a year and suppose AMI is tried and found guilty and convicted. How does that look? Is the corporation guilty? Corporations can only pay fines, they can’t go to jail. Are natural persons owning the corporation, or profiting from it ( shareholders) or working with it, ( employees) or for it, ( hired lawyers) fined or going to jail?

It depends on what is discovered. Blackmail and extortion are felonies, and they are committed by the person who actually commits the crime.

You can't call someone and tell them to give you $1000 or your tell their wife they're cheating, and then say "I didn't do that, my company did that". Nor can you send your security manager to murder your competitor and say "My company did that. Fine it!"

[septimus]

I'm sure that one of America's most popular "information" sources committing crimes to protect a pair of Putin-style kleptocrats is fun to discuss in a sort of "can you believe this timeline?" way ("Is this a political thriller film? Wake me when it's over.") ...

... But what I want to know is ...

Originally Posted by Acsenray

... I guess I’ve never read the actual text of an immunity agreement, but I’d be autofocus it were so difficult to enforce.

... was "autofocus" brought to us by a zealous automated spell-checker? Or do you have a weird typing aphasia similar to mine?

[Acsenray]

It’s damn autocorrect

[Buck Godot]

Originally Posted by Ann Hedonia

Can you find any cite of any court case where the threat to release privately taken non-commercial naked selfies was treated as a legitimate negotiating point?

make that "illegally obtained, privately taken non-commercial naked selfies".

[Sherrerd]

Originally Posted by Acsenray

It’s damn autocorrect

I'm kind of surprised that Autocorrect isn't self-protective enough to detect when it's being cursed, and change the cursee.

As in: you type 'Damned autocorrect!' but it comes out 'Damned auditorium!'

/sidetrack

[hajario]

The source of the leak has been identified. Lauren Sanchez’s brother, Michael. He is a big Trump supporter.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/mistre...say-7?ref=home

[Gorsnak]

Well that's going to make for an awkward Thanksgiving Dinner.

[Chronos]

And did he have any sort of legitimate access to her phone?

[Euphonious Polemic]

Originally Posted by Gorsnak

Well that's going to make for an awkward Thanksgiving Dinner.

No worries.

He'll phone in from his cell block.

[Maastricht]

Originally Posted by Manda JO

...Blackmail and extortion are felonies, and they are committed by the person who actually commits the crime.

You can't call someone and tell them to give you $1000 or your tell their wife they're cheating, and then say "I didn't do that, my company did that". Nor can you send your security manager to murder your competitor and say "My company did that. Fine it!"

Interesting. And pertaining to the guilt of lawyers and fixers like Michael Cohen.
[Tangent}, it will be interesting to see how this plays out in the increasing number of companies who offer services that are later found to be illegal or scams. Like too-agressive debt collecting that borders on deceitful intimidation. Or selling fake "health supplements". In all of these cases, will the actual schmucks/douchebags that phoned the marks, be liable for any punishment. [/end tangent].

Originally Posted by hajario

The source of the leak has been identified. Lauren Sanchez’s brother, Michael. He is a big Trump supporter.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/mistre...say-7?ref=home

That would be punishable as revenge porn, right? Or is such crime only applicable if his sister ( of Bezos, as the other victim) presses charges? https://www.criminaldefenselawyer.co...-penalties.htm

States are starting to criminalize revenge porn with specific criminal statutes. ...New Jersey’s invasion of privacy law, enacted in 2004 (before revenge porn came to national attention), prohibits selling, providing, publishing, distributing, or otherwise disseminating nude or sexual photos of another person without that person’s permission (the penalty is a three-to-five year prison sentence or a fine up to $30,000). Wisconsin’s statute is similar (nine months’ imprisonment, and/or a fine up to $10,000), as is Idaho’s (five years imprisonment and/or a fine up to $50,000)...

Although no specific Federal law targets revenge porn, a bill introduced by Representative Jackie Speier (D-Calif) in 2016 (and slated for reintroduction in 2017) attemtps to do just that.

The Enquirer may get away with this easily if they just get fined for dessiminating revenge porn. A fine of 30 K max... but then the civil suit may be where the real blows are dealt.

[bobot]

Originally Posted by Maastricht

...
That would be punishable as revenge porn, right? Or is such crime only applicable if his sister ( of Bezos, as the other victim) presses charges? ...

IANAL, but I would like to think that: "No, my brother did not have my permission to dig around on my phone, now that you mention it." would be enough.

[Chronos]

Even if the criminal penalty for revenge porn is small and easily-absorbed by a company like AMI (in fact, they've probably come up against that law before, and just wrote it off as a cost of doing business), it's still a violation of their immunity agreement, which could have huge consequences. Especially since that immunity agreement is relevant to their connections to bigger fish. Remember, sweet though it would be to throw Pecker in jail, that's not the endgame.

[Maastricht]

The Atlantic about the legal ramifications of sextortion. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...ortion/582466/

( I noticed just now that my signature about that bar was still on. I didn't see it in my own settings of the Dope. I hope I killed it now, it must have gotten way, way old by now. )

[eschereal]

Originally Posted by Euphonious Polemic

No worries.

He'll phone in from his cell block.

Who will he borrow the phone from?

[Voyager]

Originally Posted by hajario

The source of the leak has been identified. Lauren Sanchez’s brother, Michael. He is a big Trump supporter.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/mistre...say-7?ref=home

When he opens his next Amazon order he's going to be in for a big surprise.