Fox News Roger Friedman has responded to yesterdays Press Release from Michael Jackson’s publicist.
We must have hit a nerve with Michael Jackson’s publicist and manager, Raymone K. Bain, yesterday. She issued a press release denouncing this column and claiming everything we reported is untrue.
Of course, Bain omits a few things: Two years ago she was fired by Jackson’s defense team while a jury deliberated his over allegations of child molestation and conspiracy. Jackson’s brilliant defense attorney, Thomas Mesereau, had had enough of Bain calling press conferences and lying to reporters and had her removed. It was that simple.
Bain still lies like a rug about Jackson. She seems constitutionally unable to tell the truth. Last summer, she called this reporter to say that she had proof people had conspired to ruin Jackson and bankrupt him. She could not say who they were, but she would in time, and it would be “a big story.”
That was the last we heard about that.
In the last year, Bain and Jackson’s children’s nanny, Grace Rwaramba, have taken over Jackson’s life, finances and career. His family and friends claim they have isolated the singer from them. His parents have been made to wait for hours to see him in Las Vegas. Former friends have been threatened.
Meanwhile, Jackson’s finances remain precarious as ever. Tomorrow his lease runs out on a Vegas mansion. He will move, but probably not to the luxury condo the nanny has gotten for herself in Vegas with his money.
Jackson has recently settled a lawsuit brought by Prescient Capital for $5 million. During the volley between the lawyers on both sides, Jackson’s crack legal team included in an answer his financial agreements pertaining to his 50 percent ownership of Sony/ATV Music Publishing. It was in these papers that we discovered a piece of paper entitled “Liquidation Sale,” which outlined a plan by which Jackson will sell his piece of the company to Sony on May 31, 2008. Included in the papers was another letter, evaluating Jackson’s position in regard to the liquidation sale from famed law firm White & Case.
Raymone Bain says in her press release that “reports regarding [Jackson’s finances] are ludicrous, without merit, and are being written without sufficient personal financial information to make such an unwarranted pronouncement.”
Sadly, Bain is wrong. Thanks to Jackson’s incredibly litigious nature, there are reams and reams of paper available to the public in courthouses all over the country that outline his personal finances. Perhaps she should read them.
Including the child molestation trial, and also embracing his “spider bite trial,” the lawsuit brought by Marc Schaffel, and more recently Prescient, it’s easy to figure out that come next year, Jackson’s finances will be in shambles.
Bain is apparently unaware that when Sony pays him for the Beatles, he will then have to pay off his $325 million in loans to Fortress Investments. Fortress, a New York hedge fund, recently became a publicly traded company, so more information will be available. It won’t be pretty.
What Bain fails to realize is that her stewardship of Jackson has been the most disastrous of all the ones that preceded her. Once the King of Pop, Jackson now has little standing in show business beyond his core fans. The average person has lost interest in him, perceiving him as a freak with an odd proclivity for children.
Bain says in her statement that Jackson is “putting the finishing touches on his music.” Really? Insiders say Jackson has done nothing in this arena at all and that a new album is unlikely.
We will believe it when we hear it, and not a moment sooner.
