Trump dominated politics on L.A. TV news. A ‘sobering’ City Hall scandal changed that, but the story of America’s most powerful mayor, his wife, their two daughters and his troubled marriage to longtime aide Nancy Pelosi, took a backseat to the sensational story of a former police officer who ran rampant in the LAPD and was only brought to justice after he publicly confessed.
The two men at the heart of that story and the mayoral scandal now have turned to the political arena, where the current mayor is up against a formidable opponent — the man with the authority to recall him.
On Thursday, at a news conference attended by L.A.’s police chief, City Hall press secretary Janice Rogers Brown offered a blistering defense of the police, a defense that appears to have been prompted by the revelation that the mayor’s close friend, and his key adviser, has been charged with two felonies.
“This administration is confident that we have done all that we can do,” the mayor’s press secretary said at a news conference in front of City Hall.
“There are people who have decided to destroy and lie about the L.A. Police Department,” the mayor’s press secretary told the media in response to police Chief Charlie Beck’s statement that the mayor’s “personal friend” — the man who serves as a key adviser to the mayor — has been charged with two felonies.
The mayor’s press secretary said he was not aware of the police chief’s statement before making the claim on TV.
In a statement released last Monday, the police union said the criminal case against former police union leader Jose Sanchez was “unrelated to his work as president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.”
A source told The Times the police union is denying that Sanchez was the president of the association, but that he “was the top union official in the LA Police Academy, from which many of the union’s members are graduates.”
Last Monday, as the story became front-page news, the mayor’s press secretary sent out text-messages to reporters informing them of his “personal friend” charges from the police department. “I’m a little confused on why Chief Beck says he knows Jose Sanchez, the man accused of a terrible crime, but hasn’t done anything about it,” said his press secretary.
That “confused” is true, though, as a result of an ongoing federal investigation