Free Republic

Harvard President Claudine Gay has resigned after a disastrous, brief tenure at as head of the prestigious university. In an email to colleagues today, she wrote that she was standing down after 'consultation' with the school's board, which has been under pressure to replace her after defending her congressional testimony about campus antisemitism. She failed to acknowledge where she went wrong - making no mention of her refusal to condemn antisemitism as harassment at a December 5 congressional hearing or the mounting claims of plagiarism against her - but said she had been the victim of racist threats. 'It has...

The brother of Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos' girlfriend, former TV anchor Lauren Sanchez, criticized the tech billionaire's decision to try to preempt the National Enquirer's scoop on their affair. Michael Sanchez told Fox News' "MediaBuzz" Sunday that he had been negotiating with the Enquirer's parent company, American Media Inc., to soften a forthcoming story on the couple's extramarital affair when Bezos' longtime security adviser Gavin de Becker "launched World War III against AMI" by advising Bezos to undermine the scoop with what Sanchez called a "misleading" tweet about Bezos' divorce from wife MacKenzie. "Everything that Gavin has advised...

That's one aspect of this fiasco that keeps ticking Bezos off - there's this unspoken meme out there that the richer you are, the smarter you must be. (Look at guys like Bill Gates or the founders of Google - smart computer guys, right?) And as The World's Richest Person, Bezos was happy to bask in this implied adulation too. But the fact that he would take "intimate self-pix" and send them over electronic media - which everyone, even poor peons like us, knows is hackable - shows really dumb behavior. (Bill Gates and Donald Trump never did this). Sure...

Federal prosecutors are reviewing Mr. Bezos’ claim that he has been extorted, according to two people briefed on the matter who were not authorized to discuss it publicly. And those prosecutors have planned a meeting with Mr. Bezos’ representatives, one of those people said. If American Media is found to have broken a law — any law — it would be in violation of a [previous] deal with federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York.

I am very excited for this new episode in our national drama, in which the world’s richest man publicly accuses allies of the president of extorting him with private photos of his genitalia if he doesn’t stop accusing them of politically driven hatchet jobs.For dramatic purposes, it can’t end any other way except with Bezos producing evidence that Trump himself put the Enquirer up to digging up dirt on him, as revenge for the Washington Post’s negative coverage of POTUS. And then we’ll have a fun national debate over whether it’s wrong for the president to use scandal sheets...

A reporter at the Washington Post says that an investigator hired by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos believes that text messages leaked to the National Enquirer between Bezos and his girlfriend may have been sent to the magazine by someone in government. In an appearance on MSNBC on Thursday, Post reporter Manuel Roig-Franzia said that Bezos's security consultant Gavin de Becker believes that National Enquirer obtained text messages from Bezos through inappropriate means. Bezos on Thursday said in a blog post that the Enquirer was attempting to force him to call off his investigation of the tabloid under the threat of...