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Steve Jobs’ former girlfriend Christine Brennan tried to blackmail him for $25M over memoir

Chrisann Brennan, the mother of Steve Jobs’ first daughter Lisa, tried to blackmail him into giving her $25M in return for shelving her plans for a memoir of the relationship. Brennan first requested the payment in a letter written in 2005, reports Fortune, before turning it into an ultimatum in an email sent in 2009.

I just do not have a choice anymore… No one is going to be impressed with either of us in this book and it will hurt Lisa who never deserved any of this. The choice is yours […] I am moving as fast as I can to have the money I need to live, it is either you or the book.

Jobs, who had not responded to the letter sent four years earlier, replied briefly, refusing her demand.

“I don’t react well to blackmail,” Jobs wrote back that day, copying Lisa, then 31. “I will have no part in any of this.”

Brennan subsequently went ahead with the memoir. Neither Brennan nor Jobs come out of the lengthy Fortune piece looking good.

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Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Ben Lovejoy

Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!


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