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The judge in Michael Jackson's child molestation trial ruled Thursday against allowing CNN's Larry King to testify for the defense. The bespectacled talkshow host would have said that a lawyer contacted by the accuser's family had called the boy's mother a "wacko."

Judge Rodney Melville ruled after listening to an account by King and by publisher Michael Viner, who witnessed the conversation between King and the lawyer, Larry Feldman.

They spoke without the jury present.

King said Feldman told him the mother wasn't credible and that she "was in this for the money."

Feldman testified earlier in the trial that he never spoke to anyone about his clients.

The judge excluded King's testimony because he said it wasn't clear that the lawyer had directly quoted the boy's mother.

(Associated Press contributed to this story.)