A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
What happens when political ambition collides with harassment allegations in the #MeToo era?
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
That's the subject of a new NPR investigation that digs into a scandal connected to the former mayor of Los Angeles and current U.S. ambassador to India. Eric Garcetti has been accused of lying under oath to cover up harassment allegations against one of his friends and top advisors. He's denied those allegations.
MARTÍNEZ: NPR's Tom Dreisbach obtained the full unredacted testimony from the case, including never-before-seen deposition videos. Tom, this has been alongside Eric Garcetti's story since 2020. So what can you tell us about these harassment allegations and how they relate to him?
TOM DREISBACH, BYLINE: One of Garcetti's closest friends, most trusted advisors before he became ambassador, was a man named Rick Jacobs. They knew each other for almost two decades. He served as Garcetti's deputy chief of staff at LA City Hall. Jacobs helped him raise millions of dollar for his campaigns for mayor. They worked closely on a possible presidential run in 2020. But for years, people who knew and worked with Rick Jacobs had serious concerns about his behavior.
MARTÍNEZ: What were the concerns?
DREISBACH: Well, let me say up front that Jacobs has denied all wrongdoing and did not answer any of our questions. He actually hung up the phone when I called him. But people who worked with Jacobs at LA City Hall testified that he touched them with forcible kisses on the lips, massages, hugs without their consent and made crude sexual comments, sometimes racist comments, and overall created a, quote, "hostile work environment." Multiple people testified that these concerns were a regular topic of office gossip for years. I also talked to six employees of the Courage Campaign, a liberal group that Jacobs led before joining LA City Hall, and they echoed these same issues going back to the mid-2000s.
MARTÍNEZ: So Rick Jacobs' boss at the time was the mayor, Eric Garcetti. What did Garcetti know?
DREISBACH: Well, Garcetti has denied ever seeing any inappropriate behavior by Jacobs at any time.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ERIC GARCETTI: 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.
DREISBACH: However, the allegations started coming to light in 2020 when an LAPD officer sued the city saying that Jacobs had harassed him for years, and he alleged that Garcetti witnessed this behavior and did nothing. The lawsuit turned up a lot of important evidence, including a photo. And in this photo, Jacobs is posing next to Garcetti and some lobbyists while at the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and Jacobs posed by placing his hand in front of the crotch of one of those lobbyists. Garcetti said he was looking the other way, didn't see it happen. But Naomi Seligman is a former communications director for Garcetti. She told me the photo suggests a pattern of behavior.
NAOMI SELIGMAN: Rick felt so comfortable displaying that kind of behavior in front of Eric Garcetti that he put his hand over a man's penis in a photo with Eric Garcetti inches from him.
DREISBACH: Seligman thinks Garcetti lied under oath. Another former Garcetti communications director, Suzi Emmerling, told me the same thing. And another eyewitness testified under oath that Garcetti told him, I can't believe we got through Rick's time at city hall without a lawsuit.
MARTÍNEZ: So how have Eric Garcetti and the White House - he is the ambassador to India - how they responded?
DREISBACH: Well Garcetti declined an interview request but did say in an email that he fully stands by his testimony. The White House has completely stood by Garcetti. But after the White House got Garcetti confirmed, the city of LA paid $1.8 million to resolve that lawsuit from the LAPD officer without admitting wrongdoing, and that allowed us to take a fresh look at all this evidence.
MARTÍNEZ: That's NPR's Tom Dreisbach. You can listen to his two-part investigation on NPR's Consider This podcast, Tom, thanks.
DREISBACH: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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