Every now and then someone assembles a list of encompassing narratives that the media overwhelmingly advanced and treated as reality that completely fell apart. This is one of the more obscure ones but for a while it was also everywhere.

U.N. report on Jeff Bezos phone hack only adds to questions – Washington Post

Trump, Saudi Arabia didn’t leak Bezos messages, attorney says – Politico

Bezos blackmail claims add new twist to tale of Trump, Russia – The Guardian

Jeff Bezos hack: Amazon boss’s phone ‘hacked by Saudis – Guardian

Saudi Arabia murdered a journalist and hacked Jeff Bezos – The Inquirer

Saudis deny hacking phone of Amazon, Washington Post – DW

If you know anything about the media, alarm bells should be going off when the media cartel suddenly swarms on unproven claims.

The short version of the story is that Bezos, the former CEO of Amazon and the owner of the Washington Post, had an affair, resulting in intimate pictures being passed along, apparently by his mistress’ brother, to the National Enquirer.

Bezos, one of his security thug stooges, and the entire media establishment rushed to “connect the dots’ to a Saudi-Trump conspiracy involving the Saudi crown prince, targeted for regime change by Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood, the death of Osama bin Laden pal and Washington Post op-ed columnist Jamal Khashoggi, the National Enquirer, which the media had accused of being connected to Trump, and space aliens.

Bezos, instead of being another Anthony Weiner, was transformed into a heroic martyr for backing the Washington Post’s campaigns against Trump and for Qatar, to the extent that the UN got involved, and in true Russiagate style, the media hyped the lack of findings. 

After all the theater, much like Russigate, it turned out that none of it was true.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation examined the possibility of a hack as part of a broad federal counterintelligence investigation into allegations of Saudi-sponsored hacking and espionage against the U.S., people familiar with the probe said. Mr. Bezos met at least once with federal investigators for that probe, the people said.

But the FBI didn’t obtain Mr. Bezos’ phone, and the investigation into whether the Saudis hacked the phone wasn’t a high priority, the people said. Though the FBI often doesn’t directly retrieve devices during an investigation, it stopped short of some technical steps—such as “jailbreaking” the phone to bypass security restrictions—and doesn’t appear to have resolved key questions about what, if anything, the Saudis did, the people said.

If “anything” would be the key point. Despite the attempts to hype the UN report, they actually didn’t find anything. The FBI, which is usually happy to do favors for Dems, didn’t even bother looking any further into this non-event.

Why would that be?

The people said prosecutors have determined that the source of the photos and texts was Michael Sanchez, the brother of Mr. Bezos’ girlfriend Lauren Sanchez, with whom he was having an extramarital affair.

The thing that the media dismissed, but which was obviously the case… proved to be the case.

And, as far as the National Enquirer blackmailing Bezos?

The Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office separately investigated whether the tabloid extorted Mr. Bezos when it threatened to publish racy photos of Mr. Bezos. It has closed the probe without bringing charges, other people familiar with the matter said.

Shocker. 

In the post, Mr. Bezos drew connections between American Media and “certain powerful people” who might have incentive to retaliate against him for the Washington Post’s coverage, including then-President Donald Trump and Saudi royals. Mr. Bezos owns the Washington Post.

The real story here isn’t Bezos’ successful reputation management strategy, but the media’s eagerness to push this same garbage for months. 

And this is what the media does all the time. It lies, it lies some more, and when its lies collapse, it gives a little shrug and moves on to the next set of lies, while complaining that widespread public distrust in its lies is “disinformation” and needs to be censored.