(CNN) Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is scheduled to meet with federal prosecutors in New York as soon as this week, according to people familiar with the matter. The meeting signals that the US attorney's office is escalating its inquiry connected to Bezos's suggestion that the kingdom of Saudi Arabia was behind a National Enquirer story that exposed his extramarital affair and his claim that the tabloid attempted to extort him.

Plans for that meeting come as prosecutors in the Southern District of New York are seeking to obtain access to Bezos's electronic devices, these people said. They are attempting to examine Bezos's private investigators' allegation that the Saudis "gained private information" from his phone, and that such information wound up in the hands of American Media Inc. tabloid the National Enquirer, which published Bezos's texts.

Attorneys for Bezos, the world's richest man, have been engaged in negotiations regarding his electronics. In recent weeks, Bezos's attorneys and investigators turned over to federal authorities documents and other material from their own inquiry, but not his devices, these people said.

Bezos has suggested he became a target of the Saudis due to his ownership of The Washington Post and its coverage of the murder of its columnist Jamal Khashoggi.

Amid these developments, Bezos has expanded his legal team, adding attorney Matthew Schwartz, a partner at law firm Boies Schiller Flexner LLP who spent a decade as a federal prosecutor in New York, the people familiar with the matter said.

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