Jeff Bezos dropped a stunning Medium post tonight accusing the National Enquirer‘s parent company American Media of extortion.

He shared the emails with details of the sexts they allegedly threatened to publish.

And just when everyone thought the news cycle couldn’t test our capacity for shock anymore…

I aspire to one day have “fuck you, publish my dick pics” money. https://t.co/xMBmeejsuV — Sonny Bunch (@SonnyBunch) February 7, 2019

looks like I picked the wrong week to create a frivolous google news alert for “Jeff bezos” + “dick pic” pic.twitter.com/c6yo66AOB6 — Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) February 7, 2019

More seriously, credit to Bezos for spitting on this extortion attempt and doing so in the most public way possible. Everyone knows the Enquirer is a political extortion racket — now you have the proof in print. — Esoteric Jeff (@EsotericCD) February 7, 2019

Well, we already know Bezos has huge balls. — ? (@Anthony) February 7, 2019

You can't blackmail somebody who won't agree to be blackmailed. — Jack Shafer (@jackshafer) February 7, 2019

I think one of Bezos's bets here — a good one? — is that AMI's lawyers will tell them they better not publish the pictures now that he's gone public because that increases their legal risk around extortion — Josh Barro (@jbarro) February 7, 2019

I don’t love @JeffBezos in general, but I LOVE Jeff Bezos in particular here. https://t.co/n2EtDhGBpO — Kara Swisher (@karaswisher) February 7, 2019

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall when Pecker and Co. got Bezos' reply to their extortion threat. Need a lawyer to look at this and weigh in on potential criminality here. https://t.co/NS8y8FXyCz — Jeff Greenfield (@greenfield64) February 7, 2019

Free headline: "Dick pick" blackmail allegation puts Pecker in a tight spot — Radley Balko (@radleybalko) February 7, 2019

[image via screengrab]

Have a tip we should know? [email protected]