- Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman appears to have had access to Jeff Bezos’ private messages after a video message was sent to Bezos’ WhatsApp account in April 2018.
- The crown prince seemingly went as far as to taunt Bezos last November with a sexist meme that investigators said showed a woman that looked similar to Bezos’ girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez, months before their relationship became public.
- The forensic analysis of Bezoz’ phone was first obtained by Motherboard.
- The UN has now backed up the claim that Crown Prince Mohammed was involved in hacking Bezos’ phone, calling for an “immediate investigation” into the crown prince.
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In the months before Jeff Bezos’ relationship with Lauren Sanchez was made public, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman appears to have had access to Bezos’ private messages – and even went as far as to taunt the Amazon CEO.
According to a forensic analysis of Bezos’ phone, which The New York Times reported on Tuesday, the crown prince sent Bezos a sexist meme on WhatsApp in November 2019 with the caption: “Arguing with a woman is like reading the software license agreement. In the end you have to ignore everything and click I agree.” That meme, frequently accompanied by photos of different women, has found life in aggressively misogynistic corners of the internet, such as so-called men’s rights groups.
The technical report, which was completed by FTI Consulting and obtained and published in full by Motherboard on Wednesday, noted that the woman in the meme – which has been ciculated since at least 2017 – resembled Bezos’ girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez. While the woman bears little resemblance to Sanchez other than a similar hair color, the timing of the message implied that the crown prince had access to Bezos’ messages: it was sent on November 8, during which time Bezos was in the midst of a divorce from his wife, MacKenzie, and was already dating Sanchez.
Bezos' relationship with Sanchez didn't become public until January 2019, when the National Enquirer published leaked messages and photos the couple had sent each other.
The message was one of several Crown Prince Mohammed sent Bezos over the course of 2018, according to the forensic report. Bezos and the crown prince exchanged numbers at a dinner in April of that year - on May 1, Bezos' iPhone is said to have been infiltrated after he received a video attachment from the crown prince's personal WhatsApp account. Within hours of him receiving the video, the report found that a "massive and ... unprecedented exfiltration of data" began, an increase of more than 29,000%.
The findings, which were first published in a bombshell report from The Guardian's Stephanie Kirchgaessner on Tuesday, seem to confirm a long-standing theory that Saudi officials were involved in the leaking of Bezos' relationship and personal messages last year. That claim was backed up on Wednesday when the UN called for an "immediate investigation" into the crown prince.
Bezos himself first posited that theory last February, when he published an explosive blog post titled "No thank you, Mr. Pecker" in which he accused David Pecker, former publisher of the National Enquirer and CEO of the tabloid's parent company, AMI, of trying to blackmail him. Bezos hinted in the post that there was a link between the investigation into his relationship with Sanchez and Saudi officials - specifically, that he might have been a target of the Saudis because he owns The Washington Post, which provided "unrelenting coverage," Bezos said, of the murder of its journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed by Saudi agents. The "Saudi angle" of Bezos' own investigation into the leaks seemed to have "hit a particularly sensitive nerve" with Pecker, Bezos wrote. Pecker has a long reported history with the government of Saudi Arabia.
After details of the forensic report were published Tuesday, the Saudi government issued a statement calling The Guardian's reporting "absurd" and said it would be investigating the claims.