In a self-posted essay on medium.com, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos alleged today that reps for National Enquirer owner American Media Inc. (AMI) had tried to extort and blackmail him with compromising photos of himself and g.f. Lauren Sanchez.

AMI basically threatened to publish lewd or suggestive photos of Bezos and Sanchez if the Washington Post, which Bezos owns, didn’t back away from an investigation over leaked text messages that resulted in his marriage going south.

Bezos revealed the contents of an email sent to AMI execs this afternoon (2.7).

Bezos included copies of back-and-forth emails. One is an especially incriminating email from Dylan Howard, Chief Content Officer of AMI, to attorney Marty Singer, who is repping Bezos and investigator Gavin de Becker.

Excerpt: “In the interests of expediting this situation, and with The Washington Post poised to publish unsubstantiated rumors of The National Enquirer’s initial report, I wanted to describe to you the photos obtained during our newsgathering,” Howard writes. And then Howard describes the contents of nine photos. Howard concludes by saying “it would give no editor pleasure to send this email…I hope common sense can prevail, and quickly.”