Jeff Bezos' top security consultant has told The Daily Beast he has questioned Lauren Sanchez's brother, Michael Sanchez, over leaked texts from Bezos that were published in the National Enquirer.
Bezos' security chief, Gavin de Becker, is leading Bezos' privately funded investigation into how his intimate texts to the former TV anchor Lauren Sanchez ended up in the hands of the Enquirer.
De Becker confirmed to The Daily Beast that he had looked in to Lauren Sanchez's brother. "Michael Sanchez has been among the people we've been speaking with and looking at," he said.
While he did not elaborate on the details of their conversations and said the investigation was ongoing, The Beast said, he added that "strong leads point to political motives" in leaking the messages to the press.
Michael Sanchez is a self-described supporter of President Donald Trump, who has a long-standing relationship with David Pecker, the CEO of the National Enquirer's parent company, American Media Inc.
The National Enquirer's publisher acknowledged in December that it had bought the stories of women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump to silence them, in a so-called catch-and-kill strategy.
Bezos has been a bugbear of Trump's for years, as he is the owner of The Washington Post — a paper Trump has often attacked as biased against him over some of its critical coverage. A report from the news website Axios in March cited an anonymous source as saying Trump was "obsessed" with taking down Amazon.
The president has tweeted mockingly about Bezos' divorce from his wife, MacKenzie, and told the press that the legal proceedings were "going to be a beauty."
Read more: Trump invented a new nickname for Jeff Bezos in a tweet mocking his divorce
The Daily Beast reports that Michael Sanchez associates with prominent Trump figures including Roger Stone, Trump's former campaign manager who was recently indicted by the special counsel Robert Mueller.
Stone confirmed to The Beast that he and Sanchez knew each other, saying in a text: "I do know Michael Sanchez — very good guy." The Beast also said he denied hacking into Bezos' phone even though it had not accused him of doing so.
The Beast also unearthed links between Sanchez and the former Trump campaign foreign-policy adviser Carter Page. "Michael is a friend and his agency, Axis Management, has represented me in the past," Page told The Beast in a text.
Michael Sanchez tweeted on Thursday, seemingly in response to de Becker talking to the press. "Gavin de Becker, @JeffBezos right hand man, spreads fake, unhinged conservative conspiracy theories, 'dog whistle' smears, with on-the-record quotes to trashy tabloids," he said.
—Michael Sanchez (@mikey2go) February 1, 2019
Sanchez declined to comment when contacted by The Beast.
