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Ex-Michael Publicist Tattles?
The top-secret grand-jury proceedings in the Michael Jackson molestation case may have just gotten a little less top secret.
The Smoking Gun on Monday identified a former Jackson publicist as a "key witness" for the prosecution.
Ann Gabriel, a Las Vegas-based media entrepreneur who worked briefly for the entertainer, told grand jurors last spring of Jackson's alleged conspiracy plot to keep his young accuser under wraps, sources tell the Website.
Gabriel's reputed testimony is at the heart of heavily edited court documents released Friday.
In the papers, posted on the Smoking Gun, Jackson's lawyers argue that the "so-called testimony" of a "key witness," publicly ID'd only as "she," amounts to nothing more than "hearsay, speculation and conjecture."
The mystery woman that the Smoking Gun claims is Gabriel never personally met Jackson, and remained on his payroll for just three weeks prior to being canned, the defense team said.
A phone message left with Gabriel was not returned Monday.
In April, a grand jury in Santa Barbara County, California, indicted Jackson on 10 felony counts, ranging from molestation to conspiracy.
Lawyers for Jackson, who has pleaded innocent to all charges, have been trying to get the judge in the case to toss the indictment, charging that Santa Barbara County prosecutors bulldozed their way through the grand-jury process, literally "bull[ying] and argu[ing] with witnesses."
The Jackson FileE! Online tracks all the latest developments.
They cited the reputed Gabriel testimony as proof that the proceedings "were full of improprieties."
Per the defense team's court documents, the would-be Jackson insider talked about how Jackson went into "crisis management" mode following the broadcast of the Martin Bashir documentary Living with Michael Jackson, even though she was but a "peripheral, bit player" in the singer's camp.
The Bashir documentary, which aired on ABC in February 2003, is the point of origin in the current Jackson molestation case. A boy who was interviewed for the special about his sleeping accommodations at Neverland reputedly is the entertainer's main accuser for the molestation allegations.
Additionally, prosecutors charge Jackson conspired to kidnap the child, now 14, and hold him against his will as bad publicity mounted in the wake of the Bashir documentary.
Gabriel's link to Jackson appears to be a round-about one.
Gabriel, who runs a media firm and a streaming-media trade organization, Webcaster Alliance, was a publicist for David LeGrand, an attorney retained by Jackson in January 2003 for a royalties battle with Sony, the Las Vegas Review Journal reported.
Through LeGrand, Gabriel was retained as Jackson's publicist, as well, the Smoking Gun said.
Gabriel was fired for trying to secure too much TV face time, sources told the Website, citing her alleged grand-jury testimony.
Jackson's trial is set to begin Sept. 13, although no one, from the defense to the judge, seems to think that's when the proceedings are actually going to start.
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