I've been asked how the FBI is involved in investigating the hack of Bezos's phone, here's a quick thread:
The head of security for Jeff Bezos - and the man tasked with getting to the bottom of this - clearly said in a March 2019 op-ed that he handed his report concluding hacking to federal authorities: thedailybeast.com/jeff-bezos-inv…
In April 2019, Jeff Bezos met with federal prosecutors to talk about both the hacking and the extortion claims: edition.cnn.com/2019/04/10/pol…
So the FBI was informed early on. As you can imagine, the hack the world's richest businessman would be of national security concern, and it would make complete sense for the FBI to treat it as such.
Note that there are two pieces to this - there is the hacking, which occurred in May 2018, and then there's the extortion, which occurred between Jan and Feb 2019...
To remind, the "extortion" part concerns how AMI executives attempted to blackmail both Jeff Bezos and his head of security into silence, using intimate pictures stolen from Jeff's phone. Bezos rejected the blackmail and made it public.
...And paradoxically, although the hacking is more egregious, it is the *blackmail* that is more legally actionable by the FBI. This is because MBS is sovereign, but AMI and other Trump-universe characters are not. They are US citizens under the FBI's jurisdiction.
