Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass promised reporters she'd take their questions. Then she vanished.
Hours after reports emerged that Bass had personally intervened to soften the findings of the Palisades After-Action Fire Report — a document examining the city's response to a fire that killed 31 people and destroyed 7,000 homes — the Democrat mayor held a press conference on Tuesday to announce anti-ICE measures. She told the room she'd stick around for off-topic questions afterward. She didn't.
Instead, her strategic communications staffer, Kolby Lee, emerged to deliver the news:
"She's not coming out right now."
One reporter's response cut straight to the point:
"So, she lied to us?"
Lee awkwardly laughed it off and told reporters they could email their questions. That's not accountability. That's a getaway car with a Gmail address.
According to the Daily Mail, the day before Bass's disappearing act, the New York Post revealed the original 92-page draft of the Palisades After-Action Fire Report. The version the public eventually received was 22 pages shorter. Language had been altered. Findings had been softened.
Two sources told the Los Angeles Times that Bass told then-interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva the early draft could expose the city to legal liability. Two people close to the mayor reportedly informed sources that Bass wanted key findings about the LAFD response removed or softened — and that she held onto the original draft until the changes were made.
One of those confidants reportedly told an unidentified source that Bass "didn't tell the truth when she said she had nothing to do with changing the report."
Both confidants are now prepared to testify under oath.
The report itself was prepared at the mayor's office's behest, according to its own executive summary. So Bass's team commissioned the investigation, allegedly gutted the findings, and then denied involvement. That's not oversight. That's stage management.
Bass has tried multiple defenses, and none of them align with each other — or with the emerging facts.
In December, a spokesperson for the mayor's office issued a flat denial:
"The report was written and edited by the fire department. We did not red-line review every page or review every draft of the report."
The spokesperson added that the mayor's office only asked the fire department to fact-check findings regarding city finances and high-wind forecasts. A narrow, technical request — or so the story went.
Then, in an interview with the LA Times last month, Bass offered her own version:
"The only thing that I told them to do was I told them to talk to Matt Szabo about the budget and funding, and that was it."
She followed up with a line that deserves to be remembered:
"That's a technical report. I'm not a firefighter."
You don't have to be a firefighter to tell someone their report creates legal liability and needs to be changed. You just have to be a politician protecting yourself.
This isn't an abstract dispute over bureaucratic drafting. The Palisades fire began in January 2025 and burned continuously for 24 days. Thirty-one people died. Seven thousand homes were reduced to ash. The damage reached $150 billion.
The families who lost everything — their homes, their neighbors, their loved ones — deserved an honest accounting of what went wrong. Instead, they got a report that was allegedly trimmed by nearly a quarter of its length to protect the political interests of the mayor who commissioned it. One confidant reportedly even warned Bass that altering the report could damage her political career. She allegedly did it anyway.
That's the calculus. Not "how do we prevent this next time?" but "how do we survive this politically?"
The timing of Tuesday's press conference deserves its own scrutiny. Bass chose the morning after the cover-up allegations broke to announce anti-ICE executive directives — guaranteed to generate sympathetic coverage from outlets more interested in immigration theater than municipal accountability.
It's a familiar playbook. When the story is about your failures, change the subject to something that rallies your base. Immigration enforcement is the perfect distraction for a progressive mayor in a progressive city. Every camera that pivots to the ICE story is a camera that isn't asking about 22 missing pages.
Bass structured the press conference so the ICE announcement came first and the hard questions came — theoretically — after. Then she skipped the "after" part. The reporters who showed up for substance got a press release and a closed door.
LAFD Public Information Director Stephanie Bishop offered a statement that carefully said nothing about the mayor:
"Chief Moore has been clear that he is determined to foster a culture of transparency and accountability. He is committed to strengthening the department by taking corrective action wherever appropriate and to ensuring the Los Angeles Fire Department improves its operations and readiness to make Los Angeles a safer city for all Angelenos."
That's the fire department talking about the fire department. It is conspicuously silent on whether the mayor's office directed changes to the report. Chief Moore was appointed after the report was conducted — he inherited this mess, not created it.
The real question isn't whether the LAFD can improve its operations. It's whether the mayor of Los Angeles suppressed findings about a catastrophic fire to shield herself from legal and political consequences — and then lied about it repeatedly.
Two people close to Bass say that's exactly what happened. They're willing to say it under oath.
Bass, meanwhile, won't even say it to reporters in a hallway. She promised she would. Then she sent Kolby Lee to tell them to send an email.
Thirty-one people are dead, and the mayor can't stand at a podium long enough to answer for it.