American Media Inc., the National Enquirer's parent company, had so many contacts with Saudi Arabia over the last several years that it asked the Justice Department in 2018 if it should register as a foreign agent, a person familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal.
Under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, anyone who represents the interests of a foreign power in a "political or quasi-political capacity" must let the government know about this relationship. AMI sought money from Saudi investors to fund acquisitions, wanting to purchase Time, Fortune, Money, and Sports Illustrated, and it produced 200,000 copies of a 97-page glossy magazine titled The New Kingdom, which praised Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Because of these contacts, AMI approached the Justice Department, asking whether it should register as a foreign agent, the Journal reports.
The Justice Department responded that it determined the company was not "an agent of a foreign principal" under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the Journal says. A person familiar with the matter told the newspaper that the New Kingdom issue fawning over Prince Mohammed was "done to kiss his ass when he came to visit in the hopes he'd invest in the company and it didn't work. There was nothing more to it than that."
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Last week, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos accused AMI of trying to blackmail him, using intimate photos and texts as leverage to get him to drop an investigation into how the National Enquirer accessed earlier texts he sent during an extramarital affair. Bezos said that the "Saudi angle" of the investigation "seems to hit a particularly sensitive nerve." For more on the connections between AMI and Saudi Arabia, visit The Wall Street Journal.
-
US to take 15% cut of AI chip sales to ChinaSpeed Read Nvidia and AMD will pay the Trump administration 15% of their revenue from selling artificial intelligence chips to China
-
NFL gets ESPN stake in deal with DisneySpeed Read The deal gives the NFL a 10% stake in Disney's ESPN sports empire and gives ESPN ownership of NFL Network
-
Samsung to make Tesla chips in $16.5B dealSpeed Read Tesla has signed a deal to get its next-generation chips from Samsung
-
FCC greenlights $8B Paramount-Skydance mergerSpeed Read The Federal Communications Commission will allow Paramount to merge with the Hollywood studio Skydance
-
Tesla reports plummeting profitsSpeed Read The company may soon face more problems with the expiration of federal electric vehicle tax credits
-
Dollar faces historic slump as stocks hit new highSpeed Read While stocks have recovered post-Trump tariffs, the dollar has weakened more than 10% this year
-
Economists fear US inflation data less reliablespeed read The Labor Department is collecting less data for its consumer price index due to staffing shortages
-
Crypto firm Coinbase hacked, faces SEC scrutinySpeed Read The Securities and Exchange Commission has also been investigating whether Coinbase misstated its user numbers in past disclosures
