Why it MATTERS That Every Michael Jackson Accuser Took a Monetary Payout, with Andrew Hammel

Added: 2026-05-30

[00:00:00]All I want is one w the the the few witnesses who come forward who didn't take money defend Michael like Macaulay Kulkin um like Brett Barnes they def they have never taken a dime and they defend Michael. I want one person who has not taken money who comes out to say this is real. He did it to me and I don't want a dime. Just want you to know this is real. that that that would make it so much easier, you know, but like the fact that all these accusers took money is just so despicable in my in my view. I just they they've they've muddied the waters. Anyway, back to you.

[00:00:41]>> Yeah, that is that's the argument that won the trial in 2005. So, Michael Jackson's lawyer, Tom Mezero, veteran criminal defense attorney, extremely good lawyer. Uh, he cross-examined all of these, they were all allowed to to testify as sort of like pattern and propensity evidence to show that Michael Jackson had a tendency to abuse young boys, but Mezro tore them all apart on cross-examination. And the argument that he consistently made is if you really saw a child being abused with your own eyes by Michael Jackson as you claim or something that you know that's extremely incriminating. Why didn't you just immediately go to the police?

[00:01:23]And they didn't have a good answer for that. And they all had to admit they had taken tabloid money. They had threatened to sue Michael Jackson. Many of them were disgruntled employees who had been fired for cause as Mezero was able to show. And so the attempt to show this broad pattern fell apart because basically every one of the accusers had their hand out or had a grudge or had changed their story. And so that is uh you know that I I say in the article that I think the jury's verdict was was reasonable. They could have gone the other way, but a quiddle was appropriate under the circumstances because the there are so many holes in the prosecution's case because of these witnesses.

[00:02:09]>> Yeah. Here is um Tom Mezero in 2019 uh speaking about the Jackson case. S 21.

[00:02:18]>> Do you think he's remotely or could have been remotely capable of doing any of those things?

[00:02:23]>> The things he's been accused of doing, absolutely not. I am 100% convinced.

[00:02:28]Michael never abused a child, never harmed a child, certainly never molested a child. I think this is hogwash.

[00:02:35]>> Do you think if he was still alive, do you think these people would now be coming out and saying the same thing that he molested me?

[00:02:43]>> I just don't know. I mean, I think uh I have to believe these are financially motivated accusations. I have to believe that because how else can you explain it? Um I take that into account, too.

[00:02:56]But I personally am not involved in their civil lawsuits. I've not represented anybody in them. I've not been present for any of the proceedings.

[00:03:02]I don't know who said what in those cases. I just know the evidence that I saw. And that leads me to a very powerful conclusion that Michael Jackson never abused a child at any time, never tried to hurt a child. We had testimony in the trial that he said he would slit his wrist before he would hurt a child.

[00:03:24]So, okay, that's Meo. He believes his client. But in that trial, while he did a very good job defending Michael Jackson, it was the cross-examination of of the mother of the victim, the alleged victim who sunk the case. So, she sank the case. So, what what was so bad about the mother's testimony, Andrew? Like, why did she do so poorly?

[00:03:52]Well, I believe she was on the stand for something like five days. Uh, and the reason she was important is because the prosecutor had sought to sort of like upcharge the child molestation allegations by also saying that Michael Jackson and his employees had essentially kidnapped the family and forced them to stay at Neverland Ranch to make these exculpatory interviews.

[00:04:19]And uh that was a bad mistake by the prosecution because you know Janet Arvo took the stand. She snapped her fingers at the jury. She lectured. She went on long rambling excursions. Uh she had to be reprimanded by the judge over and over. And you know the the defense attorneys kept pointing out you could have left at any time. And you know, you even left the ranch and came back to it voluntarily because you wanted the favors and you wanted the free lodging and you know, the possibility of gifts from Michael Jackson. You weren't kidnapped. You weren't held against your will. And you she was also, you know, she engaged in fraud, welfare fraud and perjury that she was convicted of after the trial. But there was already indications that she had basically applied for welfare even though she had already gotten a $150,000 judgment in a lawsuit against JC Penney.

[00:05:19]Um, you know, allegedly one of the security guards attacked her in the parking lot and she had all that money, the 150,000 and then she applied for welfare and got it and concealed that settlement which she certainly did. And uh so she was completely noncredible and Mezero painted her as sort of a grifting con artist willing to do anything to extort money from the Jackson estate.

[00:05:43]Now it's true she didn't sue him before the criminal trial. But as we both know if had Michael Jackson been convicted then the civil judgment against him would have been just you know a matter of pure form. you know, she she could just sue him for civil damages and automatically win because he had already been convicted.

[00:06:02]>> I do feel the need to say that we see this pattern oftent times, whether it's a pedophile or a serial rapist of women or harasser, abuser, they these victimizers choose their victims wisely.

[00:06:17]They don't usually choose somebody from an intact home with a loving set of present parents and financial means. You know, they they look for someone who's vulnerable, who might be, you know, in a difficult family situation and whose credibility, the family as well, would be easy to destroy. So, I I do feel the need to say that because is it possible he did that with these families? Yes, it is. It's possible. That's one of the possibilities that's out there. Um, okay. So, he wins that trial and we we go forward. Now, you point out in your piece that um there's a journalist named Diane Diamond who worked for Hard Copy and she's one of the people who bust this case wide open to begin with. uh she busted it up open because she was given back in the 93 time frame um a police report about him allegedly being a pedophile and with the with the admonition she said from somebody saying I this can't keep happening as if there had been multiple reports to authorities of Jackson being a pedophile. So, she's been on this for a long time and she wrote um a postcript to she wrote a book in 2005, but then she updated it after that Neverland documentary again in air quotes came out and uh she wrote the following. A highly placed law enforcement source once revealed to me the results of a forensic deep dive into Jackson's financials. The source said that that that examination concluded that over the years leading up to the 2005 criminal trial, the entertainer had doled out about $200 million worth of gifts and hush money to young boys and their families. This astonishing figure, uray, appeared to be confirmed by attorneys representing Wade Robson and James Safechuck, two of his accusers featured in that Finding Neverland or leaving Neverland during civil litigation against the Jackson estate in 2015. $200 million. If that's true, you say it's confirmed by attorneys representing these two who would have had access to those kinds of numbers. Um, it also does dovetail with what Latoya said in her later retracted soundbite about her mother showing her the checks that he'd written to multiple families, not just Jordie Chandler, it sounded like. Um, and it would explain his financial ruin because on the day he died, the New York Times, the Daily just did a deep dive into this. On the day he died, the his estate was valued at zero given all the debt he was in and lack of income because these allegations had taken their toll.

[00:08:56]Yes, absolutely. Now, I mean, we can't really, of course, we can't completely verify the 200 million, but we know that at least 25 million is accounted for because he paid the settlement to Jordan Chandler and also to Blanca Francia, one of his former maids, who uh accused him of abusing her son, Jason Francia. He settled that uh lawsuit for for about $2 million uh over $2 million in the mid1 1990s. And you know, the other thing is that, you know, we we all know how things work in Los Angeles. If you're a lawyer, you have fixers who, you know, when a demand letter comes in from a potential plaintiff, the fixers come around and they make it go away. And if you have hundreds of millions of dollars, you can make a whole lot of things go away before they even hit the airwaves. And so it's not just the, you know, hush money payments and settlements and and also gifts. He bought a house for Jimmy's James Safechuck's family. Uh, and, you know, he bought an incredible amount of expensive bling. Uh, and incredibly expensive paintings and artworks. Yeah.

[00:10:07]And so he was broke at the end of his life. And that's why after he, you know, after 2005, he was really broke.

[00:10:16]>> Thanks for watching this clip. If you're new here, subscribe. We got a whole lot more goodness where that came from.

[00:10:22]Would love to hear your feedback. You can email me too, meganme gyn megan kelly.com or just leave a comment below.

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