"'THROW-DOWN': Will Eunisses Hernandez Be Charged with Federal Crimes?" by Daniel Guss
Also: Will U.S. District Judge André Birotte, Jr be questioned for his 11th hour recusal last week?
As documented in a videoclip subsequently published in Breitbart, Los Angeles City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez told a crowd of anti-ICE protestors over the weekend that the federal immigration agency knows, “how quickly we mobilize, that’s why they’re changing tactics. Because community defense works and our resistance has slowed them down before… and if they’re escalating their tactics then so are we. When they show up, we gotta show up even stronger.”
Emphasis on “we.”
And in a weekend interview with KNBC, when asked by anchor Colleen Williams, “would you admonish (anti-ICE protestors) to stay within the confines of the law out there,” the local lawmaker replied, “What I would say is that people who are out there protesting, be safe. Remember that we need all community members to be able to ‘throw down’ in future emergencies.”
Emphasis on “throw down.”
Notably, Hernandez did not respond affirmatively that protestors / rioters should stay within the confines of the law. The clip below should start at the 5:20 mark.
Hernandez, her chief of staff and assistant chief of staff did not respond to my inquiry asking what she meant by “throw down.” In context, it is primarily defined as violent:
While anarchistic LA Mayor Karen Bass, other local officials and dutiful local news media downplayed the massive, violent rioting that subsequently took place over the weekend as “peaceful” and “protesting,” it appears that Hernandez may have broken several federal laws, with emphasis on the highlighted words in some of them:
Beyond the rioting that livestreamed continuously over the weekend, there was also troubling, targeted violence.
One such incident took place late Sunday afternoon in this disturbing clip from Right Now News that quickly racked up hundreds of thousands of views, in which several dozen young men menaced a young woman in what appears to be Hernandez’ district, spraying irritant in her face, abruptly braking bicycles behind her to trip her and urging one another to violently attack her.
I asked the U.S. Department of Justice on Sunday whether it is investigating Hernandez for these and other violence-inducing activities.
The response was a succinct, “We have no comment.”
Stay tuned.
Getting back to my two columns on Friday…
For a number of weeks, I had wondered why U.S. District Judge André Birotte, Jr hasn’t immediately recused himself from the federal criminal case against Brian K. Williams, who until recently was LA Mayor Karen Bass’s Deputy Mayor of Public Safety.
The case is about Williams’ reportedly now-admitted fake threat to bomb Los Angeles City Hall. Think about that for a moment: The Mayor’s top deputy for public safety had threatened to bomb City Hall.
Consistent with their impressive career trajectories, the Judge and Defendant had known one another for many years.
On Friday, Williams had a scheduled “change of plea” hearing before Birotte scheduled for 1:30pm. That is why I could no longer delay addressing it, which I did at 11:49am with "Karen Bass's former deputy changes plea in federal court. But also, a City Hall drag show and other magnificence"
Birotte’s 1:30pm docket had a lengthy delay, during which time the DOJ confirmed for me (based on a tip that I had received) that Birotte had, indeed, just recused himself from the Williams case, though no explanation was provided. I reported this at 3:09pm: EXCLUSIVE: "Federal Judge in Brian K. Williams Case HAS Recused Himself"
This appears to have been an instance of “Judge Shopping,” which according to the Brennan Center for Justice, is “a practice by which litigants exploit quirks in the structure of the federal judiciary to evade random assignment and instead hand-pick judges who are sympathetic to their ideological goals.”
In a December 2024 opinion column for the Washington Post, David S. Tatel, who served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, explained that the decision of a federal judge to recuse should follow his simple 5-minute rule.
“If I had to spend more than five minutes thinking about how my participation in a case might be perceived, I chose to recuse. This meant that I recused even when I was confident that I could rule impartially because I worried that my impartiality ‘might’ still ‘reasonably be questioned.’”
There is little doubt in my mind that Birotte recused himself at the 11th hour solely in response to my column earlier Friday morning, which I understand led to behind-the-scenes gnashing between Williams’ defense team, federal prosecutors and the Court.
Local news media should have called-out this conflict of interest, an ongoing failure in local journalism that I have continually raised in the history of this column and its previous incarnations.
(Daniel Guss, MBA, won the LA Press Club’s “Online Journalist of the Year” and “Best Activism Journalism” awards in June ‘23. In June ‘24, he won its “Best Commentary, Non-Political” award. He has contributed to the Daily Mail, CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Cumulus Media, KCRW 89.9 FM, KRLA 870 AM, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star-News, Los Angeles Downtown News and the Los Angeles Times in its sports, opinion, entertainment and Sunday Magazine sections among other publishers.)