Jeff Bezos desires Michael Sanchez to protect $1.7 million in lawful costs

• Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is in search of around $1.7 million from Michael Sanchez to address authorized expenses.
• It really is the hottest in a legal battle between Bezos and his girlfriend’s brother around Bezos’ leaked texts.
• Sanchez submitted a defamation suit versus Bezos previous calendar year, which a decide threw out in November.
• Go to Organization Insider’s homepage for additional stories.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is in search of in excess of $1.7 million from his girlfriend’s brother, Michael Sanchez, to address lawful fees he incurred as a final result of Sanchez’s unsuccessful defamation lawsuit. 

Bezos and his individual stability chief, Gavin de Becker, filed a motion Friday with Los Angeles County Outstanding Court docket to compel Sanchez to reimburse them for $1,676,919.50 in lawyer fees and $36,019.26 in other expenses they racked up while defending a defamation accommodate from Sanchez final calendar year. 

“These service fees and expenditures are affordable and the sum of perform performed was commensurate with that needed to protect vigorously against Plaintiff’s abusive and continually shifting circumstance. For that reason, Defendants’ fee ask for must be granted in total,” the movement reads, which is signed by Bezos’ attorney, Edward Takashima.

Tom Warren, an attorney for Sanchez, explained to Insider in a statement that “Mr. Bezos’ cost ask for is obscene, even grotesque, on many degrees.”

Go through additional: Jeff Bezos is again in the trenches at Amazon. Insiders explain performing with a a lot more deeply involved CEO.

The request is the most up-to-date development in a tabloid drama concerning Bezos and Sanchez that started a lot more than two decades ago. In January 2019, several hours after Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, declared they ended up divorcing, Web site 6 and the Nationwide Enquirer disclosed that Bezos was in a partnership with Lauren Sanchez, a helicopter pilot and previous Tv set anchor.

The Enquirer reported it experienced performed a four-month investigation into the connection between Bezos and Sanchez and experienced obtained “raunchy messages” the pair experienced sent each individual other, some of which the tabloid printed. The Enquirer also claimed it experienced racy images of both of those Bezos and Sanchez, like just one that was too explicit to describe in print.

Bezos funded an investigation into the leaked messages, which was headed up by de Becker. De Becker explained to The Every day Beast at the time that Michael Sanchez was “amongst the folks we’ve been talking with and wanting at” through the investigation and that “robust sales opportunities issue to political motives” for leaking data to the Enquirer, which Sanchez denied. 

In February 2020, Sanchez filed the defamation suit versus Bezos and de Becker, alleging that equally adult males falsely accused him of providing nude photos of the Amazon CEO to the Nationwide Enquirer. Sanchez claimed in the fit that Bezos advised journalists he experienced handed in excess of the visuals to the tabloid, but Sanchez mentioned he by no means had the photographs in his possession.

Bezos speedily filed a motion to dismiss the fit underneath California’s Anti-SLAPP law, which is intended to secure from frivolous lawsuits. In November 2020, Decide John P. Doyle dominated in favor of Bezos, calling the evidence “inadmissible hearsay” and hanging down Sanchez’s go well with. The latest movement argues that Bezos and de Becker are entitled to recoup legal professional service fees as section of that regulation. 

Bezos, who owns around 11% of Amazon, is the 2nd-richest man or woman in the environment with a web worth of $192 billion.