Journalist Ronan Farrow said tabloid publisher American Media Inc. sent him blackmail threats over his reporting on President Donald Trump and the National Enquirer. Farrow tweeted about the “stop digging or we’ll ruin you” efforts shortly after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, in a bombshell blog post on Medium, said AMI CEO David Pecker threatened to publish embarrassing photos of him if he didn’t stop investigating the company.

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. (I did not engage as I don’t cut deals with subjects of ongoing reporting.) https://t.co/kHQdWIkVjV — Ronan Farrow (@RonanFarrow) February 8, 2019

Farrow has written extensively about AMI’s “catch and kill” practice, in which the publisher buys stories in order to bury them, and how such measures benefited Pecker’s pal, Donald Trump, in the 2016 presidential campaign. AMI has entered into a non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors in New York and is cooperating in the investigation into its payment to former Playboy model Karen McDougal to suppress a story about her claimed affair with Trump. Farrow also tweeted a reference to a New Yorker story he worked on about how the same editor Bezos was dealing with ― AMI chief content officer Dylan Howard ― was sharing reporters’ information with disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein to help him combat sexual misconduct accusations. AMI said in a statement Friday that it will investigate Bezos’ claims and determine what action to take. “American Media believes fervently that it acted lawfully in the reporting of the story of Mr. Bezos. Further, at the time of the recent allegations made by Mr. Bezos, it was in good faith negotiations to resolve all matters with him,” the company said. Investigative journalist Ted Bridis said on Twitter Thursday that Associated Press reporters working on the Trump-National Enquirer story had been warned that AMI private investigators were digging into their backgrounds, though he “never saw evidence of this” and it didn’t affect his reporting.

We were warned explicitly by insiders that AMI had hired private investigators to dig into backgrounds of @AP journalists looking into the tabloid’s efforts on behalf of Trump. Never saw evidence of this either way, and it didn’t stop our reporting. — Ted Bridis (@tbridis) February 8, 2019