Jeff Bezos is likely to beat the defamation suit brought by his girlfriend's brother. Here's how the Amazon CEO became embroiled in a tangled web of lawsuits and family drama.

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In January 2019, Bezos and his then wife, MacKenzie, announced they were divorcing.

Their announcement was followed soon after by bombshell reporting from Page Six and the National Enquirer: Bezos was in a relationship with Lauren Sanchez, a helicopter pilot and former TV anchor.

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At the time, Sanchez was married to Patrick Whitesell, the co-CEO of WME, a Hollywood talent agency. The couple had been friends with Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos because they had houses near each other in Seattle, according to Page Six.

The Enquirer said it had conducted a four-month investigation into the relationship between Bezos and Sanchez, tracking the couple "across five states and 40,000 miles" and tailing them on hikes and dinner dates.

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Beyond its own surveillance of Bezos and Sanchez, the Enquirer reported it had acquired "raunchy messages" the couple had sent each other, some of which the tabloid published. The Enquirer also said it had racy photos of both Bezos and Sanchez, including one that was too explicit to describe in print.

Soon after, The Daily Beast reported that Bezos was funding an investigation — headed up by his personal head of security, Gavin de Becker — into who had leaked his private messages to the Enquirer. De Becker said at the time that he thought the leaks were "politically motivated," which AMI denied.

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In February 2019, Bezos responded to the scandal in an explosive blog post, in which he accused National Enquirer publisher AMI and its then CEO, David Pecker, of trying to blackmail him.

Bezos wrote that AMI had been threatening him with the publication of explicit pictures he'd taken of himself unless he stopped investigating who leaked his photos and texts to the tabloid. In response, Bezos published the emails he'd received from AMI.

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"Rather than capitulate to extortion and blackmail, I've decided to publish exactly what they sent me, despite the personal cost and embarrassment they threaten," Bezos wrote.

De Becker told The Daily Beast that Michael Sanchez was "among the people we've been speaking with and looking at" during the investigation and that "strong leads point to political motives" for leaking information to the Enquirer.

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Sanchez had described himself as a supporter of President Donald Trump, who had a longtime ally in Pecker. De Becker told the Washington Post in February 2019 that he thought the Enquirer had published its scoop about Bezos and Sanchez in order to embarrass Bezos, and that members of Trump's 2016 campaign were involved.

A feud has simmered for years between Trump and Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post. Trump has made the Post a target over the years and has lumped together Amazon and the Post as a way to cast doubt on the paper's credibility.

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For his part, Sanchez denied de Becker's allegation, accusing him of telling "lies, half-truths, sloppy tabloid leaks, [and] crazy conspiracy theories" in a statement to the Washington Post. He told Fox News that "all of the investigations thus far have cleared me of any involvement in the below-the-belt selfies."

Sanchez told Business Insider that he did not leak Bezos' "penis photos" to the Enquirer, but did not specifically deny leaking text messages between his sister and Bezos. "I'm not saying I didn't do something," he later told Vanity Fair, but said his only goal was to protect his sister and Bezos' relationship.

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Sanchez had worked as a Hollywood talent manager, and he told Fox News that Bezos had asked him for help handling the scandal around his divorce. "He said that he didn't think the Amazon PR team was equipped to handle this kind of story," Sanchez said of Bezos.

In March 2019, de Becker wrote in The Daily Beast that he believed the Saudi Arabian government had hacked Bezos' phone in order to gain access to his private messages in retaliation for the Post reporting Saudi agents killed Post columnist, Jamal Khashoggi.

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In January 2020, that assertion was backed up by reports by the Guardian and United Nations investigators, who said they had "reasonable certainty" that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was involved in a hack of Bezos' iPhone.

Throughout it all, AMI has insisted that Michael Sanchez is the single source behind its reporting on Lauren Sanchez's relationship with Bezos. According to a New York Times report from January, Lauren Sanchez shared the texts and photos with her brother, who then licensed them to the Enquirer for $200,000 in October 2018.

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In February, Michael Sanchez filed a defamation lawsuit against Bezos that claims Bezos and de Becker falsely accused him of providing the nude photos to the Enquirer. Sanchez claimed in the suit that Bezos told journalists he had handed over the images to the tabloid, but Sanchez said he never had the photos in his possession.

Following the lawsuit filing, Lauren Sanchez said in a statement to TMZ that her brother "secretly provided my most personal information to the National Enquirer — a deep and unforgivable betrayal. My family is hurting over this new baseless and untrue lawsuit, and we truly hope my brother finds peace."

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In the lawsuit, Sanchez used the word "fiancé" to describe Bezos' relationship to Lauren Sanchez, implying that the couple is engaged.

Bezos quickly filed a motion to dismiss the suit under a California law that's intended to protect against frivolous lawsuits. Bezos said Sanchez's suit amounted to "extortion" and directly threatened free speech.

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This week, Los Angeles County Superior Court tentatively ruled in favor of Bezos, striking down Sanchez's defamation suit. "Here, there is no admissible evidence that Defendants published the subject statements. Plaintiff's declaration merely discusses what he was told by reporters, which is inadmissible hearsay," Judge John P. Doyle wrote in his ruling.