LA Mayor Karen Bass Sued By L.A. Times Over Deleted Text Messages

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was sued over the weekend by the Los Angeles Times, with the paper claiming that Bass and other officials purposefully withheld and deleted texts and other records during the opening days of the Southern California wildfires in January.

According to the L.A. Times, the deleted records first came to light earlier this month when a public information request for the texts messages from Bass’ time in Africa and during her travel back to L.A. the first few days of the wildfires was denied on the grounds that those texts were all deleted by the Mayor. After continued questions by the press, the Mayor’s office finally said that it was able to recover the deleted texts but only provided around 125 messages to and from Bass, saying that the rest were either redacted or withheld based on legal exemptions.

The Mayor’s Counsel, David Michaelson, defended the decision, saying the texts were not covered by the California Public Records Act and that the unshown messages were protected under a Supreme Court decision. While the Times countered, the Mayor’s office stood firm, leading to the lawsuit over the weekend.

“The City’s apparent position that an official may delete a text communication at any time as ‘ephemeral’ until a public records request is received would destroy the presumption of access to public records,” reads the suit. “All a public official would have to do to avoid public scrutiny is destroy the texts immediately after creating them.”

In an article, the L.A. Times explained their reasoning behind the suit.

“The city has already turned over many of the exchanges between Mayor Karen Bass and other officials sought by Times reporters. But officials have argued they are not compelled to do so under state public records laws,” said reporter Sonja Sharp. “The Times disagreed. Empowering public officials to scrub their records or to decide which are subject to the law sets a dangerous precedent, Thursday’s suit argued.”

Specifically, the Times argued that any writing, including digital records, were covered by the California Public Records Act, as it is writing about public business. They then went on to say that all records then must be turned over.

Suing Bass

The Mayor’s office defended itself over the weekend, saying that they have responded to hundreds of requests without any incident since her election, with her wildfire texts being the first to trigger a lawsuit.

“The Mayor’s office has responded to hundreds of public records requests since she was elected and we will continue to do so,” added Michaelson. “The Mayor’s office released responsive texts to a PRA request from the Times last week and the Office will continue to respond to public record requests.”

The lawsuit is only the latest in dozens of wildfire-related incidents that Bass has been forced to deal with since returning to Los Angeles from Ghana on January 8th. These have included her cutting $17.5 million from the LAFD  in the 2024-2025 city budget, deciding to travel abroad in January despite knowing that a major emergency was predicted to happen with high speed winds expected, giving a minimal response to the fires on the first day, refusing to answer press questions, having promised to never travel abroad as Mayor yet doing it anyway, and showing an overall general mismanagement of the fires once she returned to L.A.

In the past month, Bass has also attempted to scapegoat an LAFD fire chief, was informed of a recall attempt officially starting up against her, and was battling against the initial L.A. Times text message deletion scandal. The owner of the L.A. Times, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, even reversed course of their initial support of Bass during the 2022 elections, saying that endorsing her over developer Rick Caruso was a mistake.

While the lawsuit is now out against Bass, the L.A. Times has maintained that this goes beyond the text messages, and is more about Bass doing what she wants even though the public is entitled to see those messages.

“It’s bigger than these text messages,” added The Times outside counsel Kelly Aviles. “The city seems to believe they can destroy whatever they want whenever they want, and that they don’t have a duty to the public to retain public records.”