February 21, 2025 • 33 mins
The John Kobylt Show Hour 2 (02/21) - Michael Monks comes on the show with the latest update on the Menendez Brothers. LA City Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez is trying to garner support from other councilmembers for Kristin Crowley to overturn Crowley's firing. Daniel Guss comes on the show to talk about Mayor Bass firing Kristin Crowley. More on Mayor Bass firing Kristin Crowley.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
CANF I am six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
You're listening to the John Cobel podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
Daniel Guss an independent journalist here in Los Angeles who
is one of the few who covers city Hall all
day and all night every day. It seems he's going
to come on with what he knows about the best
firing of Christian Crowley, the fire chief. We'll have plenty
(00:23):
to do on that. Michael Monks, who has spent a
fair time at City Hall covering city government, is today
on the story of Nathan Hawkman making an announcement on
the future of the Menendez brothers. What did he have
to say today? Yeah, I'm on all those stories today.
(00:43):
It's been a busy day here in the KFI newsroom.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
But this press conference that just wrapped up involving La
County DA Nathan Hawkman felt like an introductory law school class.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
He recapped the case.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
He went over all of the legal you know, obligations
of a prosecutor, a defense team, the court itself on
what they need to consider here. So I want to
make sure I relay that information to you as accurately
as possible. Because it was a crash course in what
he's doing, right, I'll tell you right off the bat.
It doesn't look like he's very sympathetic to the Menindez
brothers and their case.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
I wouldn't expect him to be.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
So.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
There are three paths that the Menindez brothers have to
maybe get out of prison in some capacity. The first
one is their request that they have ongoing for a
new trial based on their suggestion that they have new
evidence that they were sexually abused by their father and
that was not considered effectively enough during the first two trials.
(01:40):
The second mechanism is a resentencing wish could again consider
that new evidence, consider their ages at the time in
the amount of time serve that may see them free.
And the third ist possible clemency from the governor, which
has always been out there no matter who the governor is. Today,
Hakman only addressed directly his decision on the first one,
which is the new trial, and he came out firmly
(02:02):
against it. He says that this new evidence that the
Menindez brothers defense team have claimed that they have suggesting
that they suffered sexual abuse at the hands of their father,
Jose Menendez, really hasn't been substantiated. Well enough, it has
not been presented in a timely manner. It doesn't meet
the legal threshold to call for a new trial. So
(02:23):
the DA's office, their position is no to a retrial
of the Menindez brothers.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Now Mark Garagos is leading the Menendez brothers claims in court,
and so this is going to be Hawkman's DA position
officially to counteract it.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
It's going to counteract that exactly.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
So that's what the court will then consider based on
where the prosecutions. Obviously, it was the La County DA
that prosecuted the Menez brothers all those years ago. It
wasn't Nathan Hawkman himself, but it was this office. And
the position of the office today is no resentencing. However,
he did excuse me no new trial. He did address
the resentencing component as well. That has different legal hurdles
(03:08):
or considerations to be made. He says his office will
probably have a decision on that in two two and
a half weeks.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
All right, So he didn't come out against the resentencing
idea yet, well.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Not yet, but you got the sense he was asked
directly and he kind of evaded a direct answer about
whether they should be freeze. That's for the court to decide,
but it was pretty clear that his position is one
that these sexual abuse claims just are not supported by
the evidence that is available, and that this so called
new evidence, which he casts doubt upon, is valid enough
(03:41):
to warrant these new considerations.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
And does the Menendez attorneys want to use the same
sexual evidence to at least get a resentencing exactly, So
if he doesn't think the sexual evidence is strong for
a new trial, he's not going to think it's strong
for a resentencing.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
What he said was there different legal considerations. I don't
know what those are, Like I said, this felt like
a law school class the way he was kind of explaining.
And by the way, for those listening, his office has
also released a video explaining some of the stuff. He
rehashes the case itself and then talks about the legal
components leading up to this decision. But when I mentioned
(04:19):
that he doesn't seem very I guess a sensitive to
the Menez brother's case. He talked about how their story
changed about five times, going from we didn't do it
all the way to yeah, we did it.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
But this is why that's why, you know, some people
might think it's tedious that Hackmann was there for a
while and going through all the details. But this is
a story from thirty six years ago, and there's a
lot of people who feel sympathetic for the Menendez brothers
who may not have been born then or were little
children not paying attention, and they don't remember exactly the
(04:51):
insanity that was going on around with those two brothers
for quite a while. They were not captured the same
day or the next day. This went on for months
before they were f I pulled in for an arrest.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
It was a national sensation in the nineties, one of
the great trials of the nineties, the TV trial period.
But it was popularized, of course more recently by a
documentary and a dramatization on Netflix, so that got a
lot of attention. Possibly triggered former DA George Gascon to
take a closer look at it, and he did seem
more sensitive to the Menindees brothers and their case. That
(05:24):
does not appear to be the situation now with Nathan Hachman.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
A lot of people pushing for the Menandez brothers seemed
to be emotionally involved.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
With the Menandez brothers in some way.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
But if you look at the facts of the case.
There's no way you'd let these people out.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
That's what you got the sense of from Nathan Haffman
today was or the rehash of the events and the
behavior of the brothers leading up to the killing and
after the killing, and the changing of the stories, and
how possibly this sexual abuse claim may have arisen as
a last ditch effort to find a way out.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
All right, Michael, very good, Thank you, my pleasure, Michael Munks.
Nathan Hawkman holding a press conference today saying he's going
to be arguing against a new trial for the Menendez brothers,
not impressed with the quality of the sexual abuse evidence.
All right, when we come back, we will return to
this absolutely astonishing press conference that Karen Bass had where
(06:18):
she is complaining that she's complaining, well, she fired Kristin
Crowley and complaining that Kristin Crowley didn't call her and
tell her how bad the fire was going to be. Seriously,
we're living in an outdoor mental institution, all of us.
Speaker 5 (06:36):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Back to this astonishing firing. Karen Bass has gotten rid
of Kristin Crowley, and I'm looking I mean, every time
I look in one direction or another, there's there's another thing.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
That's just.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Bizarre, because now a member of the city council is
trying to put together support for Crowley to override the firing.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Now follow me on this.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Bass has complete authority to remove Crowley or any department head.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
But if Crowley were to appeal the.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Firing and the city Council backed the appeal with a
two thirds vote, then Crowley would stay. And a two
thirds vote is ten out of fifteen. So there's a
council member Monica Rodriguez, and she criticized Bass's decision according
(07:44):
to the La Times, and says she's going to try
to get the ten votes from the city Council to
overturn the firing. The Time says that would be a
steep challenge, but not impossible. Rodriguez says, it's absolutely unacceptable,
clearly continues to change her posture. On January seventh, she
(08:04):
was praising the chief chief in her response, and it
appears as the heat kicked up over her absence, she
tried to blame someone else. Well, the two of them
both ought to go because Crowley did send a thousand
firefighters home and Crowley did keep forty engines in the garage,
(08:27):
so she has to go. And Crowley did not have
a crew watching that fireworks, you know the spot where
the fireworks fire began, because that may may I say,
have been kicked up by the winds and reignited, or
(08:48):
it could have been vagrants. And I wonder do you
think if it was a vagrant fire that they would
ever admit to it? Could you keep that kind of
a secret, because remember a vagrant fire almost took down
the ten freeway a couple of years ago, and Newsoman
Bass tried like hell to cover it up. I don't
(09:08):
even think they investigated to look for the guy. There
was a photo of a homeless guy walking away suspiciously,
and I'm not aware of any follow up on that.
They just let stories like that fade away and die.
Can you imagine if it was a homeless guy, because
that's the backdrop to all this. We have a city
unlike any other city in America, where tens of thousands
(09:33):
of mental patients and drug addicts walk around starting fires
by the thousands.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Every year.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Fourteen thousand fires are started by vagrants in La Fourteen
thousand bum fires every year and it just goes on
and nobody stops it, and then we pour a billion
dollars into homelessness, which is really all those criminal faith
nonprofits stealing our money. Kind of like the High Speed
(10:03):
Rail Commission, kind of like the climate nonprofits in Washington,
d C.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
We found about, we found out about this week.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Once you start digging for all the disgusting corruption, there
is no end, There is no end, and it is
it is absolutely embedded in Los Angeles from top to bottom.
So I so Crowley never should have gotten the job.
This is the diversity monster that ate LA. Between Bass
(10:37):
and Crowley and Kenonia's none of them had the qualifications
or the intelligence really to have the jobs they had.
Garcetti brought Crowley, Bass did not replace her. Bass brought Kenoniez,
still hasn't replaced her. How do you not replace the
(10:58):
woman who left the reservoir? And what Bass is not
explaining is why didn't Why didn't a reporter ask her that?
Or maybe maybe somebody did. Every time Bass keeps wanting,
she didn't call me, she has my cell numbers, she
didn't call me, she didn't tell me how bad it
was going to be.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Well, why did you call her.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
You posted the fire warning, so you saw how extreme
it was. Bass posted the fire warning? Did she not
know that it was posted under her name? Is that
another thing she didn't know? I wasn't aware of. Frankly,
I wasn't aware of. How does somebody say that to
a reporter with a straight face? Frankly, I wasn't aware
(11:37):
of the fire What.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
I looked it up?
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Well, I didn't look it up. Daniel Guss got it
for me and he's going to be on it in
a few minutes. She has two hundred and thirty eight
staff members, Karen Bass, two hundred and thirty eight people?
Do you have two hundred and thirty eight s half
members who work under you? Her primary responsibility is the
(12:05):
safety of the citizens of Los Angeles. It's number one responsibility.
So here comes this extreme fire warning and she leaves
and doesn't come back, and then claims nobody called her,
and she puts out the extreme fire warning on the sixth,
(12:26):
But does it call Crowley and say, do you have
enough bodies?
Speaker 1 (12:30):
What are you gonna do?
Speaker 2 (12:31):
You're gonna keep the second shift on, You're gonna put
out the engines.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
What do we need?
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Do we need to call, you know, the county. We
need to call the state. What do we got to
do here? Instead, she was drinking with the President of Ghana.
What they think We're all gonna forget this? Here's another
quote from U. Bass has a spokes whole named Zack Sidell.
(12:56):
Listen to this statement from Zach Sidell. I love these
spoke souls. Done as a box of rocks. But four
other major weather emergencies, the mayor or, at a 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, So that means Bass
(13:20):
does not have to respond to the fire because she
didn't get a call or her chief of staff didn't call.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Is that x sid Ellen sane?
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Seriously, that's the defense she didn't call me when Bass's
own Twitter account has the fire.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Emergency warning from the Weather Service. But what you think
this is going to work?
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Changing the subject and pointing at Crowley. Of course Crowley
ought to be fired. That's not the point. It's still
Bass's fault. It's Bass's fault because she has to demand
that Crowley do everything possible or fire Crowley on the
spot before the fire rages and puts somebody in Who's
(14:07):
going to make those decisions.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
That's her job. Anybody think otherwise?
Speaker 2 (14:20):
January second, National Weather Service said extreme fire weather conditions
beginning on the seventh. On January third, they sent out
major Risk Take Action, Critical fire conditions. January fourth, Beast
leaves for Ghana. January sixth, Weather Service says heads up,
(14:40):
life threatening, destructive widespread windstorm expected Tuesday afternoon Wednesday morning.
Every news station on television, all the radio stations that
carry news, all the new sites that cover Los Angeles
had something about this, and Karen Bass says, frankly, I
(15:01):
wasn't aware of the warnings, And why didn't Kristin Crowley
call me?
Speaker 1 (15:04):
She actually says this, She has my cell phone number.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
So you have to call Karen Bass directly on her
cell to get her to respond to a fire that
destroyed thousands and thousands of buildings.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
You have to call her.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
If you don't call her, then your town burns and
people die.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
The town burned, people die, and Karen Bass is going, well,
nobody called me. What you believe this?
Speaker 2 (15:34):
I'm not making this up. My head's going to explode.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
What happens.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
If my head explodes, then what do I do? Your
head's probably exploding. I don't know what you're gonna do. Uh,
We've got We've got Daniel Guss coming on. He's the
independent journalist, the Guest Report. You could find all his
stuff online. He covers city Hall obsessively and very well.
Speaker 5 (16:00):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI Am
six forty.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Rick Ruso coming on after the three o'clock news. Rick
Caruso coming on after three o'clock. Earlier in the afternoon,
LA Mayor Karen Bass fired the LA Fire chief Kristin Crowley,
claiming that Crowley never called her to tell her how
bad the fire was going to be seriously, also complaining
(16:27):
that Crowley refuses to do one of those after action reports.
Crowley didn't keep a thousand extra firefighters on today for
a second shift, and also kept to forty fire engines
in the garage, which is true, and she should be
(16:48):
fired for not sending one thousand firefighters and the forty engines.
It's also true that the fire department is extremely underfunded,
but not Karen Bass, and that's the excuse she didn't
call me, and she has my cell number. That's how
you run the city. Karen Bass is two hundred and
(17:10):
thirty eight staff members. Here's some headlines from around the world. Really,
La Mayor Karen Bass claimed she wasn't aware of wildfire
warnings when she left the country, says The National Review.
LA mayor's disgraceful excuse for going to Ghana while her
city burned. Daily Mail Eli Mayor Karen Bass gives a
(17:34):
mind bottling excuse for being in Ghana as her city burned.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
New York Post.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
I'm gonna talk to Daniel gust now, and he's a
journalist here in Los Angeles. She's on with us frequently,
and he has a substack and you can find him online.
Speaker 4 (17:52):
Dangly there, Yes, sir, how are you John. It's it's
a sort of every day it's something new, it's a
new lie. It's like you're watching an episode of Leave
It to Beaver in real time, you know, like Beaver's
got the chocolate around his mouth, denying that he ate
the chocolate. She was lying. Karen Bass was lying to
(18:16):
Alex Michaelson, defying what was on her Twitter account, denying
you had a great video segment the other day John
talking about that. You just looked up what the National
Weather Service said. It said it right.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
There all the way January.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
Yeah, and I'm glad, I'm glad you mentioned zach Sidell,
her her mouthpiece at City Hall. He will put us
He's like the zach Sidell, Karen Bass's communications guy. He's
like the Carrine Jean Pierre of La City Hall. He
will just put it out there with a straight face,
(18:56):
in written form, and as though we're supposed to believe
because they put it out there.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
And do they think anybody is buying this? I don't
know anybody who's buying anything that Bass is saying nothing.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
They they think people are buying it. Because until this
whole situation, by the way, coinciding with the Trump's returns
to the White House, because it has worked to date
and the La Times facilitated and endorsed all of these
politicians and all of these policies and all of this
(19:32):
DEI stuff in the quinone is that at the LADWP,
it's worked up until now and it's all collapsing now.
But unfortunately, with tragedy, tragic consequences, deaths, and tens and
hundreds of billions of dollars of damages or tens of
(19:53):
billions of dollars of damages. And it's only now coming
to life because the la TIMES which has been doing
the slightly better job of late. But all of these
chess pieces have been put into motion for years. That's
how we wound up with this, with this this circle
(20:14):
jerk of corruption of life. And by the way, Kristin Crowley, no,
I'm not going to defend her because she has covered
up criminal activity and corruption. She has overseen falsification of
response times at the la FD and the LAPD is
just as corrupt. Not the frontline guys, but the management.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Yeah, management is most of these cases. Well, I just
can't believe that Bass is trying to excuse her her
absence and her lack of response by saying, well, Kristin
Crowley didn't call me, she had my cell phone number.
That is so outrageous, so preposterous, it just can't be real.
She thinks she's gonna blame Crowley for not calling her.
She's Crowley's boss, there is, She's running out of options
(21:04):
she needs she is.
Speaker 4 (21:05):
Karen Bass is literally cornered. She's gotten away with lying
like a lot of these politicians, if not the super
majority of them had for their entire careers. If they
just go along and say things and we have a compliant,
non doubting media that they get away with it. And yeah,
(21:26):
they think that as you and I were chatting offline. Yeah,
she's got over two hundred and thirty taxpayer paid employees
according to the city controller's dashboard, and none of them
contacted her. Well, then then why are they there? And
by the way, I showed you that list of their salaries,
(21:46):
A lot of those two hundred and thirty eight people
are making well into the six figures two hundred thousand,
three hundred thousand in salary and then heaped upon benefits
on top of it. Who then was supposed to do this?
Was it Zach? Was it Carolyn Webb, Demasius Webb, her
chief of staff, or those dozen or more deputy mayors
(22:10):
working for Carolyn.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
May Let me ask you what about the deputy mayor
who was supposed to oversee the police and fire departments,
who's on leave accused of calling in bomb threats to
city Hall?
Speaker 1 (22:23):
What happened to that story?
Speaker 4 (22:25):
You know what we're gonna find out, because that's a
federal investigation. That's Brian k Williams, who, let's be Claire
has not yet not at this point, been charged with
any crime. He's her deputy mayor in charge of public safety,
and he's on leave at home after the FBI rated
his home doing here.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Okay, who was doing his job? Because they should have
been on the phone too with Kristin Crowley. There should
have been a big meeting the night before, because I
was in the Palisades that morning and I hike with
my wife and for Charry Canyon and the Wins.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
It started, and I knew about all the warnings.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
And I said, oh, I said to my wife, this
looks like something bad is going to happen. You could
feel it. And we took video up the winds blowing.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Where she stopped.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
It took video because we just kind of knew this
is an important moment, like we're very close to some
terrible thing happening.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
And yeah, but but.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Karen Bass said, I didn't get a call from Kristin Crowley.
Speaker 4 (23:27):
That's bull. That's bull. And by the way, she's still denying,
as you saw it in the press conference today, Karen
Bass is denying that she made cuts. I'm going to
tell you something she did talking about seventeen eighteen million
dollars in budget cuts for the fire department. My sources,
people who spent their entire lives at the LA Fire Department,
said that the proposed cuts were forty eight or.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Forty nine million.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
So it's just a shell game. They these governments, not
just city Hall, but especially city Hall. They come up
with numbers and they define jobs that are funded, funds
that are funded but not occupied. Over time. It is
all a shell game. It is all corrupt, and it
(24:11):
has been corrupt for much longer than just this.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Let me ask you something is recalled the only way
to get rid of her or I guess. I guess
Gavin Newsom doesn't have the authority that they have in
New York State, where Kathy Hochel was considering getting rid
of Eric Adams as the mayor. In New York City,
we don't have a mechanism like that, do we, as.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
Far as I know. No. I think the hocal Eric
Adams thing in New York is a very unique thing
from what I've heard, and I believe we would have
heard of that option sooner if it did exist here
for any reason.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
You think any politicians here in Los Angeles or Sacramento,
including Newsom, are going to start stepping forward and saying
enough is enough blow the whistle.
Speaker 4 (24:58):
Well, you know, Monica Rodriguez, who I think you mentioned
a moment ago, is trying to get support for a
two thirds override according to the charter, which, by the way,
kudos to producer Ray Lopez. He brought that to my
attention before I heard of it going on today. I
(25:19):
don't think it's gonna happen because Monica Rodriguez, you want
to talk about a politicized city council. She used to
chair a city council's Public Safety committee, and when Mark
Chris Harris Dawson, the city council president, decided to rearrange
the chess pieces, he bumped her from that role because
(25:40):
she didn't support him in this role or that role. So,
if Monica Rodriguez is trying to garner two thirds of
support for Kristin Crowley, I don't see it happening. I mean,
there is supposed but it's not.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Like Kristin Crowley.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Nobody should go to the ends of the earth trying
to save her job anyway, because she did make all
these bad decisions.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
Oh yeah, and she was a Garcetti higher And by
the way, Karen Bass, listen, John, I'm just the guy
with the keyboard. When Karen Bass came into the mayor's job,
she wanted a hire another very odd choice to be
LA Fire Department chief named Armando Hogan, and he was
(26:24):
going to be named her LAFD chief to replace Crowley
until I reported that he was getting grabby grabby with
one of the civilian staffers at the fire department, a
very high profile civilian staffer. So if it wasn't Crowley,
it might have been Hogan. If it wasn't this one,
it wouldn't have been that one. But the entire brass
(26:44):
at the fire department, there's corruption there. It is far worse,
John story. Haven't you even had a chance to report
on yet? Is there are There is copper theft going
on in communications systems in the supulvita basin where the
copper has been ripped out and sold by vagrants or
(27:05):
whoever does that type of thing, such that the fire
department relies on communications on radio for communications, That's how
bad it is. There are certain firehouses where if you
press the buzzer, they have to come down to open
the gate because the phone systems aren't working, because the
copper is being stolen.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
We're all going to hell. Daniel, I gotta go on
late for the news.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Thank you for coming on again any anytime, John Daniel Guts.
Speaker 5 (27:33):
You're listening to John Cobel on demand from KFI Am
six forty.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Rick Caruso will be on live over the phone here.
One of the things that if you didn't hear, Bass
has fired Kristin Crowley, the fire chief, claiming, among other things,
that probably never called Bass to let her know how
bad it was going to be. This should not be overlooked.
The LA Fire Department is contradicting what Bass is saying.
(28:04):
It's a polite way of putting it, saying that she
was well aware of the huge risks before leaving for Africa,
and she left anyone. I got this from California Globe.
See this was Evan Simon at the Globe. He wrote that, well,
(28:24):
this is a quote from the Los Angeles Fire Department
prior to the Palisades fire. Prior to the fire, the
Los Angeles Fire Department emailed two separate media advisories, conducted
multiple live and recorded media interviews about the predictive extreme
fire weather and notified city officials about the upcoming weather event. Now,
(28:49):
all this stuff is part of the public record, so
I'm going to assume that what the fire department is
saying is true, that they did put out media advisories
and did do live and recorded in views, and did
notify city officials. Because again, since we work at a
radio station here and everybody's monitors. Everybody here monitors everything internet, television, radio,
(29:13):
I can tell you absolutely for sure, by Thursday evening
there wasn't a soul that didn't hear one of these
reports in the media and in government. And then you
add Friday and then Saturday, and Bass leaves on Saturday,
and then Sunday and then Monday, and by Monday, Bass's
own Twitter account was sending out a warning and her
(29:39):
spokeshole and this guy is a block of wood, Zach
Sidel says, before other major weather emergencies, the mayor has
received a direct call from the fire chief.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Seriously, I can't get over this. I just cannot get
over this.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Look, everyone thought that whenever he used rhetoric about DII
hiring or voting based on people's characteristics rather than experience
and competence that somehow that was offensive and wrong. But
(30:29):
what I saw in Karen Bass because she was on
the radar, oh fifteen years ago, she was the Assembly leader.
I believe she was the Assembly leader, and I thought
she was terrible. She was behind a lot of bad legislation.
And then she disappeared into Congress for ten years and
(30:49):
came back to run here in La as mayor because
I don't know, she wanted to maybe get another pension
going buff up. Her pension had like a retirement job.
And then you know when they found when she found
out that twenty twenty eight was going to be the Olympics,
she'd be the mayor for the Olympics, and she'd stand
on an international stage and welcome the world. I understand
(31:11):
why people want to be mayor and why you'd want
to be the mayor of la at this particular time.
But she had no no executive experience. She had no
management experience.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
At all.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
And this is a city of four billion people. She's
got two hundred and thirty eight people just in her
own mayor's office. And if you've never been in a
position where you had to make decisions about hiring and
firing about life and death, where you had to manage
a large living organism filled with a lot of people,
and you know, government who are not good at what
(31:51):
they do and waste a lot of money. As we're
finding out with the Adote investigations, there is not only
a lot of deadwood, there's a lot of corrupt people.
And you put somebody who's got no experience at all
in managing anything. She didn't deserve the job by any
objective means. It was obviously a thousand times over Rick Caruso,
(32:15):
and maybe in a quiet, sedate lucky four years, it
doesn't matter that much. But wow, when something really bad happens,
it's everything. It's everything. Because you take the warning, the
weather warning seriously. You immediately convene a meeting and you're
(32:39):
very direct and pointed with the questions, and you say,
I want to see the plan.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
I want to know what you're going to do.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Let's say flames suddenly take off in the Palisades, or
they take off in bel Air, or they take off
in Hollywood, or they take off in Woodland Hills or
Sherman Oaks or in Cino.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
What what are you going to do?
Speaker 2 (33:00):
You got the extra thousand. Do we have to make
calls and get other people to help us?
Speaker 1 (33:06):
What are you going to do? What are you going
to do?
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Where's the most likely place you think the fire is
going to start? That's what you do as an executive.
Maybe it's that spot where the fireworks were being shot
off in the Palisades.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
It would have been a good place to put an
extra crew. All right, we come back.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
It's Grit Crusoe is going to be on live with
us Brigintia di Angostino live in the KFI twenty for
our newsroom. Hey, you've been listening to the John Cobalt
Show podcast. You can always hear the show live on
KFI AM six forty from one to four pm every
Monday through Friday, and of course anytime on demand on
the iHeartRadio app.
CANF I am six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
You're listening to the John Cobel podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
Daniel Guss an independent journalist here in Los Angeles who
is one of the few who covers city Hall all
day and all night every day. It seems he's going
to come on with what he knows about the best
firing of Christian Crowley, the fire chief. We'll have plenty
(00:23):
to do on that. Michael Monks, who has spent a
fair time at City Hall covering city government, is today
on the story of Nathan Hawkman making an announcement on
the future of the Menendez brothers. What did he have
to say today? Yeah, I'm on all those stories today.
(00:43):
It's been a busy day here in the KFI newsroom.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
But this press conference that just wrapped up involving La
County DA Nathan Hawkman felt like an introductory law school class.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
He recapped the case.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
He went over all of the legal you know, obligations
of a prosecutor, a defense team, the court itself on
what they need to consider here. So I want to
make sure I relay that information to you as accurately
as possible. Because it was a crash course in what
he's doing, right, I'll tell you right off the bat.
It doesn't look like he's very sympathetic to the Menindez
brothers and their case.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
I wouldn't expect him to be.
Speaker 4 (01:19):
So.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
There are three paths that the Menindez brothers have to
maybe get out of prison in some capacity. The first
one is their request that they have ongoing for a
new trial based on their suggestion that they have new
evidence that they were sexually abused by their father and
that was not considered effectively enough during the first two trials.
(01:40):
The second mechanism is a resentencing wish could again consider
that new evidence, consider their ages at the time in
the amount of time serve that may see them free.
And the third ist possible clemency from the governor, which
has always been out there no matter who the governor is. Today,
Hakman only addressed directly his decision on the first one,
which is the new trial, and he came out firmly
(02:02):
against it. He says that this new evidence that the
Menindez brothers defense team have claimed that they have suggesting
that they suffered sexual abuse at the hands of their father,
Jose Menendez, really hasn't been substantiated. Well enough, it has
not been presented in a timely manner. It doesn't meet
the legal threshold to call for a new trial. So
(02:23):
the DA's office, their position is no to a retrial
of the Menindez brothers.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Now Mark Garagos is leading the Menendez brothers claims in court,
and so this is going to be Hawkman's DA position
officially to counteract it.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
It's going to counteract that exactly.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
So that's what the court will then consider based on
where the prosecutions. Obviously, it was the La County DA
that prosecuted the Menez brothers all those years ago. It
wasn't Nathan Hawkman himself, but it was this office. And
the position of the office today is no resentencing. However,
he did excuse me no new trial. He did address
the resentencing component as well. That has different legal hurdles
(03:08):
or considerations to be made. He says his office will
probably have a decision on that in two two and
a half weeks.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
All right, So he didn't come out against the resentencing
idea yet, well.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Not yet, but you got the sense he was asked
directly and he kind of evaded a direct answer about
whether they should be freeze. That's for the court to decide,
but it was pretty clear that his position is one
that these sexual abuse claims just are not supported by
the evidence that is available, and that this so called
new evidence, which he casts doubt upon, is valid enough
(03:41):
to warrant these new considerations.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
And does the Menendez attorneys want to use the same
sexual evidence to at least get a resentencing exactly, So
if he doesn't think the sexual evidence is strong for
a new trial, he's not going to think it's strong
for a resentencing.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
What he said was there different legal considerations. I don't
know what those are, Like I said, this felt like
a law school class the way he was kind of explaining.
And by the way, for those listening, his office has
also released a video explaining some of the stuff. He
rehashes the case itself and then talks about the legal
components leading up to this decision. But when I mentioned
(04:19):
that he doesn't seem very I guess a sensitive to
the Menez brother's case. He talked about how their story
changed about five times, going from we didn't do it
all the way to yeah, we did it.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
But this is why that's why, you know, some people
might think it's tedious that Hackmann was there for a
while and going through all the details. But this is
a story from thirty six years ago, and there's a
lot of people who feel sympathetic for the Menendez brothers
who may not have been born then or were little
children not paying attention, and they don't remember exactly the
(04:51):
insanity that was going on around with those two brothers
for quite a while. They were not captured the same
day or the next day. This went on for months
before they were f I pulled in for an arrest.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
It was a national sensation in the nineties, one of
the great trials of the nineties, the TV trial period.
But it was popularized, of course more recently by a
documentary and a dramatization on Netflix, so that got a
lot of attention. Possibly triggered former DA George Gascon to
take a closer look at it, and he did seem
more sensitive to the Menindees brothers and their case. That
(05:24):
does not appear to be the situation now with Nathan Hachman.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
A lot of people pushing for the Menandez brothers seemed
to be emotionally involved.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
With the Menandez brothers in some way.
Speaker 2 (05:33):
But if you look at the facts of the case.
There's no way you'd let these people out.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
That's what you got the sense of from Nathan Haffman
today was or the rehash of the events and the
behavior of the brothers leading up to the killing and
after the killing, and the changing of the stories, and
how possibly this sexual abuse claim may have arisen as
a last ditch effort to find a way out.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
All right, Michael, very good, Thank you, my pleasure, Michael Munks.
Nathan Hawkman holding a press conference today saying he's going
to be arguing against a new trial for the Menendez brothers,
not impressed with the quality of the sexual abuse evidence.
All right, when we come back, we will return to
this absolutely astonishing press conference that Karen Bass had where
(06:18):
she is complaining that she's complaining, well, she fired Kristin
Crowley and complaining that Kristin Crowley didn't call her and
tell her how bad the fire was going to be. Seriously,
we're living in an outdoor mental institution, all of us.
Speaker 5 (06:36):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Back to this astonishing firing. Karen Bass has gotten rid
of Kristin Crowley, and I'm looking I mean, every time
I look in one direction or another, there's there's another thing.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
That's just.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Bizarre, because now a member of the city council is
trying to put together support for Crowley to override the firing.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Now follow me on this.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Bass has complete authority to remove Crowley or any department head.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
But if Crowley were to appeal the.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Firing and the city Council backed the appeal with a
two thirds vote, then Crowley would stay. And a two
thirds vote is ten out of fifteen. So there's a
council member Monica Rodriguez, and she criticized Bass's decision according
(07:44):
to the La Times, and says she's going to try
to get the ten votes from the city Council to
overturn the firing. The Time says that would be a
steep challenge, but not impossible. Rodriguez says, it's absolutely unacceptable,
clearly continues to change her posture. On January seventh, she
(08:04):
was praising the chief chief in her response, and it
appears as the heat kicked up over her absence, she
tried to blame someone else. Well, the two of them
both ought to go because Crowley did send a thousand
firefighters home and Crowley did keep forty engines in the garage,
(08:27):
so she has to go. And Crowley did not have
a crew watching that fireworks, you know the spot where
the fireworks fire began, because that may may I say,
have been kicked up by the winds and reignited, or
(08:48):
it could have been vagrants. And I wonder do you
think if it was a vagrant fire that they would
ever admit to it? Could you keep that kind of
a secret, because remember a vagrant fire almost took down
the ten freeway a couple of years ago, and Newsoman
Bass tried like hell to cover it up. I don't
(09:08):
even think they investigated to look for the guy. There
was a photo of a homeless guy walking away suspiciously,
and I'm not aware of any follow up on that.
They just let stories like that fade away and die.
Can you imagine if it was a homeless guy, because
that's the backdrop to all this. We have a city
unlike any other city in America, where tens of thousands
(09:33):
of mental patients and drug addicts walk around starting fires
by the thousands.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
Every year.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Fourteen thousand fires are started by vagrants in La Fourteen
thousand bum fires every year and it just goes on
and nobody stops it, and then we pour a billion
dollars into homelessness, which is really all those criminal faith
nonprofits stealing our money. Kind of like the High Speed
(10:03):
Rail Commission, kind of like the climate nonprofits in Washington,
d C.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
We found about, we found out about this week.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Once you start digging for all the disgusting corruption, there
is no end, There is no end, and it is
it is absolutely embedded in Los Angeles from top to bottom.
So I so Crowley never should have gotten the job.
This is the diversity monster that ate LA. Between Bass
(10:37):
and Crowley and Kenonia's none of them had the qualifications
or the intelligence really to have the jobs they had.
Garcetti brought Crowley, Bass did not replace her. Bass brought Kenoniez,
still hasn't replaced her. How do you not replace the
(10:58):
woman who left the reservoir? And what Bass is not
explaining is why didn't Why didn't a reporter ask her that?
Or maybe maybe somebody did. Every time Bass keeps wanting,
she didn't call me, she has my cell numbers, she
didn't call me, she didn't tell me how bad it
was going to be.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
Well, why did you call her.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
You posted the fire warning, so you saw how extreme
it was. Bass posted the fire warning? Did she not
know that it was posted under her name? Is that
another thing she didn't know? I wasn't aware of. Frankly,
I wasn't aware of. How does somebody say that to
a reporter with a straight face? Frankly, I wasn't aware
(11:37):
of the fire What.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
I looked it up?
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Well, I didn't look it up. Daniel Guss got it
for me and he's going to be on it in
a few minutes. She has two hundred and thirty eight
staff members, Karen Bass, two hundred and thirty eight people?
Do you have two hundred and thirty eight s half
members who work under you? Her primary responsibility is the
(12:05):
safety of the citizens of Los Angeles. It's number one responsibility.
So here comes this extreme fire warning and she leaves
and doesn't come back, and then claims nobody called her,
and she puts out the extreme fire warning on the sixth,
(12:26):
But does it call Crowley and say, do you have
enough bodies?
Speaker 1 (12:30):
What are you gonna do?
Speaker 2 (12:31):
You're gonna keep the second shift on, You're gonna put
out the engines.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
What do we need?
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Do we need to call, you know, the county. We
need to call the state. What do we got to
do here? Instead, she was drinking with the President of Ghana.
What they think We're all gonna forget this? Here's another
quote from U. Bass has a spokes whole named Zack Sidell.
(12:56):
Listen to this statement from Zach Sidell. I love these
spoke souls. Done as a box of rocks. But four
other major weather emergencies, the mayor or, at a 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, So that means Bass
(13:20):
does not have to respond to the fire because she
didn't get a call or her chief of staff didn't call.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Is that x sid Ellen sane?
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Seriously, that's the defense she didn't call me when Bass's
own Twitter account has the fire.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Emergency warning from the Weather Service. But what you think
this is going to work?
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Changing the subject and pointing at Crowley. Of course Crowley
ought to be fired. That's not the point. It's still
Bass's fault. It's Bass's fault because she has to demand
that Crowley do everything possible or fire Crowley on the
spot before the fire rages and puts somebody in Who's
(14:07):
going to make those decisions.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
That's her job. Anybody think otherwise?
Speaker 2 (14:20):
January second, National Weather Service said extreme fire weather conditions
beginning on the seventh. On January third, they sent out
major Risk Take Action, Critical fire conditions. January fourth, Beast
leaves for Ghana. January sixth, Weather Service says heads up,
(14:40):
life threatening, destructive widespread windstorm expected Tuesday afternoon Wednesday morning.
Every news station on television, all the radio stations that
carry news, all the new sites that cover Los Angeles
had something about this, and Karen Bass says, frankly, I
(15:01):
wasn't aware of the warnings, And why didn't Kristin Crowley
call me?
Speaker 1 (15:04):
She actually says this, She has my cell phone number.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
So you have to call Karen Bass directly on her
cell to get her to respond to a fire that
destroyed thousands and thousands of buildings.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
You have to call her.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
If you don't call her, then your town burns and
people die.
Speaker 1 (15:25):
The town burned, people die, and Karen Bass is going, well,
nobody called me. What you believe this?
Speaker 2 (15:34):
I'm not making this up. My head's going to explode.
Speaker 1 (15:38):
What happens.
Speaker 2 (15:39):
If my head explodes, then what do I do? Your
head's probably exploding. I don't know what you're gonna do. Uh,
We've got We've got Daniel Guss coming on. He's the
independent journalist, the Guest Report. You could find all his
stuff online. He covers city Hall obsessively and very well.
Speaker 5 (16:00):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI Am
six forty.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Rick Ruso coming on after the three o'clock news. Rick
Caruso coming on after three o'clock. Earlier in the afternoon,
LA Mayor Karen Bass fired the LA Fire chief Kristin Crowley,
claiming that Crowley never called her to tell her how
bad the fire was going to be seriously, also complaining
(16:27):
that Crowley refuses to do one of those after action reports.
Crowley didn't keep a thousand extra firefighters on today for
a second shift, and also kept to forty fire engines
in the garage, which is true, and she should be
(16:48):
fired for not sending one thousand firefighters and the forty engines.
It's also true that the fire department is extremely underfunded,
but not Karen Bass, and that's the excuse she didn't
call me, and she has my cell number. That's how
you run the city. Karen Bass is two hundred and
(17:10):
thirty eight staff members. Here's some headlines from around the world. Really,
La Mayor Karen Bass claimed she wasn't aware of wildfire
warnings when she left the country, says The National Review.
LA mayor's disgraceful excuse for going to Ghana while her
city burned. Daily Mail Eli Mayor Karen Bass gives a
(17:34):
mind bottling excuse for being in Ghana as her city burned.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
New York Post.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
I'm gonna talk to Daniel gust now, and he's a
journalist here in Los Angeles. She's on with us frequently,
and he has a substack and you can find him online.
Speaker 4 (17:52):
Dangly there, Yes, sir, how are you John. It's it's
a sort of every day it's something new, it's a
new lie. It's like you're watching an episode of Leave
It to Beaver in real time, you know, like Beaver's
got the chocolate around his mouth, denying that he ate
the chocolate. She was lying. Karen Bass was lying to
(18:16):
Alex Michaelson, defying what was on her Twitter account, denying
you had a great video segment the other day John
talking about that. You just looked up what the National
Weather Service said. It said it right.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
There all the way January.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
Yeah, and I'm glad, I'm glad you mentioned zach Sidell,
her her mouthpiece at City Hall. He will put us
He's like the zach Sidell, Karen Bass's communications guy. He's
like the Carrine Jean Pierre of La City Hall. He
will just put it out there with a straight face,
(18:56):
in written form, and as though we're supposed to believe
because they put it out there.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
And do they think anybody is buying this? I don't
know anybody who's buying anything that Bass is saying nothing.
Speaker 4 (19:11):
They they think people are buying it. Because until this
whole situation, by the way, coinciding with the Trump's returns
to the White House, because it has worked to date
and the La Times facilitated and endorsed all of these
politicians and all of these policies and all of this
(19:32):
DEI stuff in the quinone is that at the LADWP,
it's worked up until now and it's all collapsing now.
But unfortunately, with tragedy, tragic consequences, deaths, and tens and
hundreds of billions of dollars of damages or tens of
(19:53):
billions of dollars of damages. And it's only now coming
to life because the la TIMES which has been doing
the slightly better job of late. But all of these
chess pieces have been put into motion for years. That's
how we wound up with this, with this this circle
(20:14):
jerk of corruption of life. And by the way, Kristin Crowley, no,
I'm not going to defend her because she has covered
up criminal activity and corruption. She has overseen falsification of
response times at the la FD and the LAPD is
just as corrupt. Not the frontline guys, but the management.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
Yeah, management is most of these cases. Well, I just
can't believe that Bass is trying to excuse her her
absence and her lack of response by saying, well, Kristin
Crowley didn't call me, she had my cell phone number.
That is so outrageous, so preposterous, it just can't be real.
She thinks she's gonna blame Crowley for not calling her.
She's Crowley's boss, there is, She's running out of options
(21:04):
she needs she is.
Speaker 4 (21:05):
Karen Bass is literally cornered. She's gotten away with lying
like a lot of these politicians, if not the super
majority of them had for their entire careers. If they
just go along and say things and we have a compliant,
non doubting media that they get away with it. And yeah,
(21:26):
they think that as you and I were chatting offline. Yeah,
she's got over two hundred and thirty taxpayer paid employees
according to the city controller's dashboard, and none of them
contacted her. Well, then then why are they there? And
by the way, I showed you that list of their salaries,
(21:46):
A lot of those two hundred and thirty eight people
are making well into the six figures two hundred thousand,
three hundred thousand in salary and then heaped upon benefits
on top of it. Who then was supposed to do this?
Was it Zach? Was it Carolyn Webb, Demasius Webb, her
chief of staff, or those dozen or more deputy mayors
(22:10):
working for Carolyn.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
May Let me ask you what about the deputy mayor
who was supposed to oversee the police and fire departments,
who's on leave accused of calling in bomb threats to
city Hall?
Speaker 1 (22:23):
What happened to that story?
Speaker 4 (22:25):
You know what we're gonna find out, because that's a
federal investigation. That's Brian k Williams, who, let's be Claire
has not yet not at this point, been charged with
any crime. He's her deputy mayor in charge of public safety,
and he's on leave at home after the FBI rated
his home doing here.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
Okay, who was doing his job? Because they should have
been on the phone too with Kristin Crowley. There should
have been a big meeting the night before, because I
was in the Palisades that morning and I hike with
my wife and for Charry Canyon and the Wins.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
It started, and I knew about all the warnings.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
And I said, oh, I said to my wife, this
looks like something bad is going to happen. You could
feel it. And we took video up the winds blowing.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
Where she stopped.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
It took video because we just kind of knew this
is an important moment, like we're very close to some
terrible thing happening.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
And yeah, but but.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
Karen Bass said, I didn't get a call from Kristin Crowley.
Speaker 4 (23:27):
That's bull. That's bull. And by the way, she's still denying,
as you saw it in the press conference today, Karen
Bass is denying that she made cuts. I'm going to
tell you something she did talking about seventeen eighteen million
dollars in budget cuts for the fire department. My sources,
people who spent their entire lives at the LA Fire Department,
said that the proposed cuts were forty eight or.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Forty nine million.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
So it's just a shell game. They these governments, not
just city Hall, but especially city Hall. They come up
with numbers and they define jobs that are funded, funds
that are funded but not occupied. Over time. It is
all a shell game. It is all corrupt, and it
(24:11):
has been corrupt for much longer than just this.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
Let me ask you something is recalled the only way
to get rid of her or I guess. I guess
Gavin Newsom doesn't have the authority that they have in
New York State, where Kathy Hochel was considering getting rid
of Eric Adams as the mayor. In New York City,
we don't have a mechanism like that, do we, as.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
Far as I know. No. I think the hocal Eric
Adams thing in New York is a very unique thing
from what I've heard, and I believe we would have
heard of that option sooner if it did exist here
for any reason.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
You think any politicians here in Los Angeles or Sacramento,
including Newsom, are going to start stepping forward and saying
enough is enough blow the whistle.
Speaker 4 (24:58):
Well, you know, Monica Rodriguez, who I think you mentioned
a moment ago, is trying to get support for a
two thirds override according to the charter, which, by the way,
kudos to producer Ray Lopez. He brought that to my
attention before I heard of it going on today. I
(25:19):
don't think it's gonna happen because Monica Rodriguez, you want
to talk about a politicized city council. She used to
chair a city council's Public Safety committee, and when Mark
Chris Harris Dawson, the city council president, decided to rearrange
the chess pieces, he bumped her from that role because
(25:40):
she didn't support him in this role or that role. So,
if Monica Rodriguez is trying to garner two thirds of
support for Kristin Crowley, I don't see it happening. I mean,
there is supposed but it's not.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Like Kristin Crowley.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Nobody should go to the ends of the earth trying
to save her job anyway, because she did make all
these bad decisions.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
Oh yeah, and she was a Garcetti higher And by
the way, Karen Bass, listen, John, I'm just the guy
with the keyboard. When Karen Bass came into the mayor's job,
she wanted a hire another very odd choice to be
LA Fire Department chief named Armando Hogan, and he was
(26:24):
going to be named her LAFD chief to replace Crowley
until I reported that he was getting grabby grabby with
one of the civilian staffers at the fire department, a
very high profile civilian staffer. So if it wasn't Crowley,
it might have been Hogan. If it wasn't this one,
it wouldn't have been that one. But the entire brass
(26:44):
at the fire department, there's corruption there. It is far worse,
John story. Haven't you even had a chance to report
on yet? Is there are There is copper theft going
on in communications systems in the supulvita basin where the
copper has been ripped out and sold by vagrants or
(27:05):
whoever does that type of thing, such that the fire
department relies on communications on radio for communications, That's how
bad it is. There are certain firehouses where if you
press the buzzer, they have to come down to open
the gate because the phone systems aren't working, because the
copper is being stolen.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
We're all going to hell. Daniel, I gotta go on
late for the news.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Thank you for coming on again any anytime, John Daniel Guts.
Speaker 5 (27:33):
You're listening to John Cobel on demand from KFI Am
six forty.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
Rick Caruso will be on live over the phone here.
One of the things that if you didn't hear, Bass
has fired Kristin Crowley, the fire chief, claiming, among other things,
that probably never called Bass to let her know how
bad it was going to be. This should not be overlooked.
The LA Fire Department is contradicting what Bass is saying.
(28:04):
It's a polite way of putting it, saying that she
was well aware of the huge risks before leaving for Africa,
and she left anyone. I got this from California Globe.
See this was Evan Simon at the Globe. He wrote that, well,
(28:24):
this is a quote from the Los Angeles Fire Department
prior to the Palisades fire. Prior to the fire, the
Los Angeles Fire Department emailed two separate media advisories, conducted
multiple live and recorded media interviews about the predictive extreme
fire weather and notified city officials about the upcoming weather event. Now,
(28:49):
all this stuff is part of the public record, so
I'm going to assume that what the fire department is
saying is true, that they did put out media advisories
and did do live and recorded in views, and did
notify city officials. Because again, since we work at a
radio station here and everybody's monitors. Everybody here monitors everything internet, television, radio,
(29:13):
I can tell you absolutely for sure, by Thursday evening
there wasn't a soul that didn't hear one of these
reports in the media and in government. And then you
add Friday and then Saturday, and Bass leaves on Saturday,
and then Sunday and then Monday, and by Monday, Bass's
own Twitter account was sending out a warning and her
(29:39):
spokeshole and this guy is a block of wood, Zach
Sidel says, before other major weather emergencies, the mayor has
received a direct call from the fire chief.
Speaker 1 (29:51):
Seriously, I can't get over this. I just cannot get
over this.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
Look, everyone thought that whenever he used rhetoric about DII
hiring or voting based on people's characteristics rather than experience
and competence that somehow that was offensive and wrong. But
(30:29):
what I saw in Karen Bass because she was on
the radar, oh fifteen years ago, she was the Assembly leader.
I believe she was the Assembly leader, and I thought
she was terrible. She was behind a lot of bad legislation.
And then she disappeared into Congress for ten years and
(30:49):
came back to run here in La as mayor because
I don't know, she wanted to maybe get another pension
going buff up. Her pension had like a retirement job.
And then you know when they found when she found
out that twenty twenty eight was going to be the Olympics,
she'd be the mayor for the Olympics, and she'd stand
on an international stage and welcome the world. I understand
(31:11):
why people want to be mayor and why you'd want
to be the mayor of la at this particular time.
But she had no no executive experience. She had no
management experience.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
At all.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
And this is a city of four billion people. She's
got two hundred and thirty eight people just in her
own mayor's office. And if you've never been in a
position where you had to make decisions about hiring and
firing about life and death, where you had to manage
a large living organism filled with a lot of people,
and you know, government who are not good at what
(31:51):
they do and waste a lot of money. As we're
finding out with the Adote investigations, there is not only
a lot of deadwood, there's a lot of corrupt people.
And you put somebody who's got no experience at all
in managing anything. She didn't deserve the job by any
objective means. It was obviously a thousand times over Rick Caruso,
(32:15):
and maybe in a quiet, sedate lucky four years, it
doesn't matter that much. But wow, when something really bad happens,
it's everything. It's everything. Because you take the warning, the
weather warning seriously. You immediately convene a meeting and you're
(32:39):
very direct and pointed with the questions, and you say,
I want to see the plan.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
I want to know what you're going to do.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Let's say flames suddenly take off in the Palisades, or
they take off in bel Air, or they take off
in Hollywood, or they take off in Woodland Hills or
Sherman Oaks or in Cino.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
What what are you going to do?
Speaker 2 (33:00):
You got the extra thousand. Do we have to make
calls and get other people to help us?
Speaker 1 (33:06):
What are you going to do? What are you going
to do?
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Where's the most likely place you think the fire is
going to start? That's what you do as an executive.
Maybe it's that spot where the fireworks were being shot
off in the Palisades.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
It would have been a good place to put an
extra crew. All right, we come back.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
It's Grit Crusoe is going to be on live with
us Brigintia di Angostino live in the KFI twenty for
our newsroom. Hey, you've been listening to the John Cobalt
Show podcast. You can always hear the show live on
KFI AM six forty from one to four pm every
Monday through Friday, and of course anytime on demand on
the iHeartRadio app.
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John Kobylt
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