NY- FBI agents are still gathering evidence in the New York Post scandal, as the investigation into a Page Six reporter’s extortion of a billionaire investor accelerates, sources said yesterday.
E-mails and videotaped conversations are the key pieces of evidence of the shakedown in which longtime Page Six staffer Jared Paul Stern [pictured] asked businessman Ron Burkle for $220,000 in return for a year’s “protection” against false items on the gossip page.
“We are cooperating with the ongoing investigation,” said David Fine, a former federal prosecutor who is one of Burkle’s lawyers.
The Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office declined comment on the probe, which began after Burkle, his lawyers and other associates anticipated the shakedown and videotaped two lengthy face-to-face conversations with Stern.
Describing how Burkle could buy Page Six protection, Stern told the billionaire, “It’s a little like the Mafia. A friend of mine is a friend of yours.”
The shakedown, excerpts of the conversations and subsequent e-mails sent by Stern to Burkle asking for the money with instructions on how the cash should be wired to Stern’s New York bank account were first disclosed by the Daily News last week.
Stern declined to be interviewed.
His lawyer Joseph Tacopina told The News yesterday, “Mr.Stern did not attempt to extort anyone and is not guilty of anything remotely criminal.”
“In short, Mr. Stern has been the victim of a fallacious smear campaign and expected to be fully exonerated and reinstated in his position,” Tacopina said in a telephone interview.
Since the first disclosures, the Post scandal has expanded to include details of lavish gifts – including free travel and hotel stays – that are given to Page Six staffers by some subjects of the column.
New York Post spokesman Howard Rubenstein said the paper acknowledged the gifts received, but said they did not influence Page Six chief writer Richard Johnson and other column staffers.
Rubenstein also confirmed that Johnson’s bachelor party last month was thrown by soft-core porn king Joe Francis at his sumptuous oceanfront estate at Punta Mita, Mexico.
Johnson and friends were flown from New York City to the party on Francis’ private jet, Rubenstein confirmed Sunday.
But Rubenstein said Johnson told him yesterday morning that he and his friends had taken a commercial flight.
And Francis said he didn’t pay for the tickets.
“I flew down there on my jet from Los Angeles with one other person to the party,” Francis said. He added that he offered to buy all the food and liquor for the three-day bash, “but Richard refused.”
Francis, 32, has made a fortune on the “Girls Gone Wild” videotape series, which features young women stripping and engaging in sexual frolics.
He has been the subject of numerous Page Six items.
“Richard is a friend of mine, a good friend,” Francis said, adding that he has not received favorable coverage in the gossip column just because of his relationship with Johnson or because he threw the bachelor party.