CommentsTHE VIEW FROM HERE - When LAPD Det. Mark Fuhrman first took the stand during the July 1994 preliminary hearing of the O.J. Simpson trial, he looked every inch the movie star as OJ himself.
When Eric Garcetti appeared on the TV Show, The Closer, as Mayor of Los Angeles, he too projected star quality. (His daddy, Gil Garcetti, had been Los Angeles District Attorney during the OJ Trial and was consulting producer for The Closer). The similarities and cross-overs between Garcetti and Fuhrman do not stop there.
For youngsters and those older people with fading memories, Det. Mark Fuhrman was a perjurer. Not only did he lie during the OJ Trial, but he was actually convicted of perjury. Yesterday, Tuesday, December 14, 2021, Eric Garcetti testified before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s hearing on his nomination to be Ambassador to India. He said.
“I want to say unequivocally that I never witnessed, nor was it brought to my attention, the behavior that’s been alleged, and I also want to assure you if it had been, I would have immediately taken action to stop that.”
Ha! Ha Ha!! Ha Ha Ha!!!
Det. Mark Fuhrman was notorious for his use of the N-word and his denial was borne of hubris and his certainty that no one in Los Angeles would step forward to impeach him. Dollars to doughnuts, Deputy District Attorney Marcia Clark had made clear to Fuhrman not to lie but to admit to his frequent use of the racial slur. (DDA Clark had to know that such a damning admission could be used to enhance his credibility.) Many believe that the LAPD took Fuhrman off the case as soon as they saw that one murder victim was Nicole Simpson, former wife of OJ Simpson. Fuhrman gave the impression that two bumbling senior detectives took over as it was a high profile case. That grousing led to the belief that Fuhrman had planted the glove in order to get himself back into the case in a star position. After Laura McKinney, the North Carolina screenwriter, testified and we heard her tapes, there was no disputing that Fuhrman had used the N-word many times. Ironclad as the Code fo Silence was in Los Angeles, it did not extend to North Carolina.
Hence, the US Senate’s Garcetti Dilemma
Who can guarantee that there is not another shoe to drop concerning Garcetti’s risible denial of his witnessing or knowing about the harassing behavior of Rick Jacobs? Garcetti can relie on the support of the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times and the rest of the regular media. The right wing media has so trashed its own credibility that no responsible person can heed their outlandish claims. Some cry wolf; they cry dinosaurs.
Garcetti can rest assured that the Los Angeles judiciary will have his back. The civil case by police officer Matthew Garza against Garcetti’s former deputy chief of staff, Rick Jacobs, will die either by summary judgment or a nondisclosure agreement.
Whence Cometh the Threat to National Security?
You can bamboozle some of the people all the time, but you cannot keep secrets from Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. As many in LA will tell you, Garcetti’s first response is to lie. He is quite good at it. He may even believe that he can parse his testimony like Bill Clinton did when he said, “It depends on what the mean of is is.” If one reads Garcetti’s statement, one notices that Garcetti did not say he did not witness Rick Jacobs’ behavior. Garcetti said, “I want to say unequivocally ....” The unfinished is thought is, “but I cannot tell the truth and become Ambassador to India so I will lie about it.”
Such parsing will not help Garcetti with Xi or Putin. They know that Garcetti is eminently blackmailable and there will come a day, let’s call it Garcetti’s Laura McKinney Day, when his house will crash down as happened to Mark Fuhrman. The greatest harm did not befall Det. Fuhrman, but rather to the entire LAPD. It was another significant step towards the LAPD’s being placed under a Consent Decree with the US Department Justice and under the supervision of a federal judge. Det. Fuhrman was not one bad apple, but he was a window into a predatory and racist police department. Garcetti is even worse in that he has been integral to crimogenic nature of Los Angeles. The developers, the politicos, and the corrupt judges have gotten away with it for so long and so openly, that they cannot fathom their Laura McKinney Day will arrive.
What diplomatic message will not be conveyed to India? What vital fact will not make it back to Washington? Remember how Saddam invaded Kuwait thinking that the US Ambassador had implied that the US would do nothing? What crucial international relationship will be sabotaged in order to keep another Garcetti secret from being disclosed? Some people fail to recognize that the walls of their closets are glass.
We know about Garcetti’s corruption with Sea Breeze, about the Millennium Earthquake Towers, about 1602 N Vine, about the Hollywood Sign Bait and Switch fraud, the Downsizing of the Los Angeles Fire Department and the civil Grand Jury June 2013 report implicating Garcetti, about two time federal felon and Garcetti fund raiser Juri Ripinsky, about the flight of Family Millennials from Los Angeles, about the Paseo Project in Hollywood, about CIM Group, about the massive homeless crisis which he brought upon Los Angeles with its thousands of needless dead, about the hundred thousand plus vacant units while Garcetti claims there is a housing shortage, about the thousands of pages detailing Garcettism in the local press. Being a predatory crimogenic society, none of these nightmares bother the Senators.
As Donald Rumsfeld observed, “But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones.” Garcetti’s national security risk comes from what Xi and Putin know and we do not know that we don’t know.
(Richard Lee Abrams has been an attorney, a Realtor and community relations consultant as well as a CityWatch contributor. The views expressed herein are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch. You may email him at [email protected])
