REPORT: LA Mayor Karen Bass deleting messages about wildfires

LA Mayor Karen Bass has been under fire since the wildfires broke out in California.

She has denied knowing anything about the warnings, having also broken her pledge not to travel internationally while serving as mayor. Now, reports are surfacing that she is deleting messages about the fires.

No Warning

Bass has insisted the warnings about the wildfires never reached her, but I don’t believe that for one second. The weather app on my phone gives me warnings about stuff like this, so I would have to think the mayor of a city prone to wildfires would at least have the same on her phone.

The city’s Emergency Management Department issued a warning to the mayor’s office the day before Bass left for her trip, which is the warning that Bass said never reached her.

Deputy Mayor Zach Seidl said the warning used the word “tentative,” so he did not feel the need to mess with the mayor’s travel schedule to tell her about the warning.

Then he threw Fire Chief Crowley, who has since been fired, under the bus, stating, “Before other major weather emergencies, the Mayor — or at minimum, the Mayor’s Chief of Staff — has received a direct call from the Fire Chief, flagging the severity of the situation. This time, that call never came.”

Budget Cuts Had No Impact

In addition to the ignored warnings about the winds, Chief Crowley had also warned that the department's budget cuts would hamper large-scale responses, as would be needed when a wildfire breaks out.

Crowley had stated, “The reduction … has severely limited the department’s capacity to prepare for, train for, and respond to large-scale emergencies, including wildfires.”

Bass stated that the budget cuts were not impacting the damage caused by the fires at all, insisting that this was about winds that became out of control and Crowley's lack of an initial response.

When Bass was called out for being in Ghana at the time, she also tried to put that narrative down, stating, “I took the fastest route back, which included being on a military plane, which facilitated our communications. So I was able to be on the phone the entire time of the flight.” That, however, never addressed her promise not to travel internationally.

Deleting Messages

The Los Angeles Times is not letting this rest, and it should not considering the damage done by these fires. To that point, the outlet has made a records request to get Bass’ text messages around the time of the fire.

The outlet reported, “She and her office have said she was in constant communication during that period. But it’s impossible to know exactly what she was communicating, because her messages were not saved, according to a city lawyer. ‘Her phone is set not to save text messages,’ said the lawyer, David Michaelson.

“Michaelson said that there is ‘no requirement that a city official or employee save text messages,’ despite the fact that the city’s own document retention policies dictate that most records should be kept for at least two years.”

Well, all phones save the messages unless you physically delete them or set the phone to delete messages on a daily basis. This is a coverup, my friends, plain and simple. Not only that, Michaelson is wrong because the LA Administrative Code requires that most records be kept for a period of at least two years. The sad reality to all of this is even with Bass being out of town when the city was on fire, she will likely win re-election because that is what Democrat voters do in blue cities.