David Pecker's lawyer told ABC's This Week that AMI wasn't trying to blackmail Jeff Bezos because all AMI wanted was the truth to come out.

Huh?

Since Trump began his run at the presidency in 2015, there has never been so much deceit, gaslighting, and outright lies being told by everyone involved in American politics from Republicans, amped up by all those that surround Donald.

Elkan Abramowitz, Pecker's attorney, who joined Stephanopoulos, gaslit viewers throughout the entire email exchange between AMI and Jeff Bezos by claiming that the founder of Amazon made public which clearly states that AMI was threatening to release embarrassing photos of him unless he changed the WaPo's reporting on the National Enquirer.

That's not a negotiating tactic, that's blackmail.

Here's some of the transcript:

STEPHANOPOULOS: But the National Enquirer believes that these photos were newsworthy, yet they’re offering there not to publish them in return for a thing of value from Jeff Bezos. Letting go of the legal liabilities, saying it wasn't politically motivated. How is that not extortion?

ABRAMOWITZ: That is not extortion because all that AMI wanted was the truth. Bezos and Ms. Sanchez knew who the source was. Any investigator that was going to investigate this knew who the source was. It was not the White House, it was not Saudi Arabia. And the libel that was going out there slamming AMI was that this was all a political hatchet job sponsored by either a foreign nation or somebody politically in this country. That is something that -- and the story was already published. How -- it's a news decision to decide how long you can go with the same story so that each side -- it was part of a legitimate negotiation.

Each side had something that they wanted.

STEPHANOPOULOS: A source close to the -- close to those conversations, familiar with those conversations says this was a crime, not a negotiation.

ABRAMOWITZ: The source is totally wrong. It's absolutely not a crime to ask somebody to simply tell the truth. Tell the truth that this was not politically motivated and we will print no more stories.

STEPHANOPOULOS: If you don't say what you want us to say, we're going to publish these photos.

ABRAMOWITZ: That's not a -- it’s -- it's part of a negotiation. Look, it’s -- it's a news decision to decide whether -- how many times you're going to write the same story. The story was already out there. I think people misunderstand that this was a post-publication negotiation to resolve any of the outstanding issues. AMI was being blamed --

STEPHANOPOULOS: But the clear threat was that there was a new story coming.

ABRAMOWITZ: The clear threat from -- from Bezos' point of view is that we're going to link you to Saudi Arabia, we're going to say that you hacked all the -- all of these texts, we're going to slander the -- the publication as much as we can. So that's why lawyers sit down and lawyers negotiate to try to resolve differences. That's exactly what this was.

STEPHANOPOULOS: How is that journalism though? If -- if you believe the photos are newsworthy, how is it journalism to say we’re not going to publish this if you give us something we want?

ABRAMOWITZ: Is it journalism to decide not to print a story three times? If -- if the story was out there -- you -- there may be a different argument if we were talking about prior to the first publication or hypothetically somebody could say, you give me a million dollars and we won't publish this. That's not what this is. The story was already there. And the issue was how much -- how much wasn't printed in the first story. You can make journalistic decisions as to how many times you're going to write the same story. That's not the -- the job of the prosecutors or anybody else to determine.