A Mandalay Bay security guard was pressured to give his first interview about the mass shooting in Las Vegas to Ellen DeGeneres because company bigwigs feared a real journalist would have grilled him about the timeline, according to a report.
Police initially referred to Jesus Campos as a “hero” — saying he intervened about midway through the mass shooting and caused Stephen Paddock to stop firing.
But officials later changed the timeline and claimed he had actually been targeted before the killing started, not after.
MGM — which owns the casino and hotel from which Paddock killed 58 people and wounded hundreds more — is worried that relatives will launch huge lawsuits, sources told DailyMail.com.
“MGM was behind the decision to call off all the interviews and did a deal with Ellen, knowing she would not play hardball on the timeline as long as she had the exclusive,” a TV insider told the news outlet.
Campos, 25, appeared Wednesday on DeGeneres’ daytime chat show, where MGM management assumed the comedian would lob softball questions at him, according to the report.
After originally agreeing to do five interviews, Campos suddenly went missing, his union boss, who was helping set up the deal, told DailyMail.com.
David Hickey, president of the Michigan-based International Union, Security Police and Fire Professionals of America, would not confirm that MGM was behind the decision, but said the company influenced the guard.
“I was in a meeting with MGM’s upper management and they were definitely concerned about how tough someone like (Fox News’ Sean) Hannity would be on him and they voiced their opinions,” Hickey said.
“Everyone knew he wasn’t to talk about security protocols, staffing or training or give out names of employees,” he told the outlet, adding that the company pressured Campos not to reveal too much.
“I thought they were being negative, telling him that someone was going to be tough and how they were worried about his health — it wasn’t the thing he needed to hear four hours before the interviews were going to begin,” he said.
“It certainly wasn’t my choice that he should appear on that circus,” Hickey told DailyMail.com.
MGM did not respond to the Daily Mail’s requests for comment.
Melissa Little Padgitt, a spokeswoman for the show, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal: “We have no additional information to provide other than what Ellen, Jesus and Stephen discussed on the show.”
Fellow hotel worker Stephen Schuck accompanied Campos on the show.
DeGeneres has been lambasted for failing to ask Campos and fellow hotel worker Steven Schuck probing questions about the timeline of the shooting — a topic that has received much attention since the tragedy.
She did not press him on whether he or hotel officials delayed calling police for six minutes after he was shot in the leg — a scenario that could open MGM to massive costs from lawsuits.
According to Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo’s first timeline, Campos was shot by Paddock through the door after the madman stopped firing at the music festival nearby.
MGM took issue with a revised timeline in which police said Campos was shot before Paddock started shooting at the music festival, but that six minutes passed before police were first alerted to the shooting.
Under a third timeline, police said Campos was shot at 10:05 p.m. and immediately alerted authorities just as Paddock started firing at the 22,000 concertgoers.