Two anonymous sources have told the Los Angeles Times that Mayor Karen Bass directed then-interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva to water down the LAFD's after-action report on the devastating Palisades Fire — specifically, that Bass told Villanueva the report could expose the city to legal liabilities and wanted key findings removed or softened. That, according to the sources, is exactly what happened.

As many as seven drafts were created before the final report was published, each one apparently scrubbed a little cleaner than the last. No names were attached to the edited drafts.

According to Breitbart, Bass's office denied everything. But the accusation alone carries enormous weight — because the Palisades Fire wasn't a routine brush event. It was the most destructive wildfire in Los Angeles history, and over 3,000 Pacific Palisades residents have filed a lawsuit alleging the state of California failed to properly monitor embers from the Lachman Fire that preceded it. If Bass meddled with the report, she didn't just soften language. She may have compromised the evidentiary record for thousands of displaced families seeking accountability.

How the Palisades Fire Began

The timeline matters because the Palisades Fire didn't emerge from nowhere. On January 1, 2025, an alleged arsonist started the Lachman Fire, according to NewsNation documents cited in the report. Six days later, underground embers reignited. At least one on-duty captain called Fire Station 23 to report that "the Lachman fire started up again."

What followed was ca atastrophe. The Palisades Fire tore through one of the most iconic neighborhoods in Los Angeles, displacing thousands and leaving entire blocks reduced to ash. The city's failure to contain the original Lachman Fire — and the apparent negligence in monitoring its aftermath — became the central question for investigators, insurers, and now litigants.

An honest after-action report would have documented that chain of failure in unsparing detail. According to the sources who spoke to the Times, the mayor had other ideas.

Seven Drafts, Zero Accountability

The first draft was created in August 2025, overseen by then-interim Fire Chief Ronnie Villanueva. Villanueva held the position because Bass had already fired former Fire Chief Kristin Crowley. That firing itself raised questions — removing the fire chief in the middle of what would become a sprawling investigation into the department's performance is not a move that inspires confidence in transparency.

Between August and October 2025, the report went through draft after draft. As many as seven versions were produced before the final report was issued. One source was blunt about who was driving the changes:

"All the changes [The Times] reported on were the ones Karen wanted."

Another source said Bass flatly misrepresented her involvement:

"[Bass] didn't tell the truth when she said she had nothing to do with changing the report."

That same source said a confidant close to Bass acknowledged that altering the report "was a bad idea." Even people in the mayor's orbit apparently understood the risk of what was happening — and it happened anyway.

One detail captures the absurdity better than any editorial gloss could: a first draft contained margin notes suggesting that a "negative" cover photo of flaming palm trees be replaced with a "positive" photo of firefighters. The city was still counting its losses, and someone in the drafting process was worried about optics on the cover page.

The Denial

Bass's office responded with force, directed entirely at the journalists who broke the story rather than at the substance of the allegations. Her office released the following statement:

"This is muckraking journalism at its lowest form. It is dangerous and irresponsible for Los Angeles Times reporters to rely on third hand unsourced information to make unsubstantiated character attacks to advance a narrative that is false."

The "third hand" characterization is not entirely unfair as a procedural matter. The two sources cited by the Times did not claim direct firsthand knowledge — they told the paper that two people close to Bass informed them of the mayor's behind-the-scenes role. That's a chain: confidants told sources, sources told reporters. It's not ironclad.

But Bass's office also issued a second statement that tried a different defense:

"The Mayor has been clear about her concerns regarding pre-deployment and the LAFD's response to the fire, which is why there is new leadership at LAFD and why she called for an independent review of the Lachman Fire mop-up. There is absolutely no reason why she would request those details be altered or erased when she herself has been critical of the response to the fire — full stop. She has said this for months."

Read that again carefully. The argument is: she's been critical of the fire response, so why would she soften the report? But being publicly critical of your fire department while privately ensuring the official record doesn't document specific failures is not a contradiction — it's a strategy. Public criticism costs nothing. A damning after-action report, on the other hand, becomes evidence in court.

And more than 3,000 plaintiffs are waiting.

Legal Exposure Is the Story

This is ultimately not a story about report drafts or margin notes. It's a story about legal liability and who bears it.

Over 3,000 Pacific Palisades residents have filed a lawsuit alleging the state failed to properly monitor embers from the Lachman Fire. The city of Los Angeles sits squarely in the blast radius of that litigation. An after-action report that honestly documented the LAFD's failures — the missed embers, the staffing gaps, the chain of decisions that allowed a contained fire to become an inferno — would have been a gift to plaintiffs' attorneys.

According to the sources, that's precisely what Bass told Villanueva: the report could expose the city to legal liabilities. If true, the mayor wasn't editing a document. She was managing a legal defense — using the fire department's own investigative process as the tool.

The sources also said that two confidants close to Bass will testify under oath if the matter is litigated in court. That claim is unverified and represents future willingness, not confirmed legal action. But the fact that it was communicated at all suggests the people around this story believe it's heading toward depositions, not just headlines.

A Pattern of Control

Consider the sequence of events Bass oversaw:

• The Palisades Fire devastates an entire community after the Lachman Fire reignites.
• Bass fires Fire Chief Kristin Crowley.
• An interim chief oversees the after-action report.
• The report goes through as many as seven drafts with deletions and revisions.
• No names are attached to the edited versions.
• The final report is published with key findings allegedly softened.
• When the Times uncovers the editing process, Bass's office attacks the reporters.

Every step in that chain concentrates control and reduces accountability. The chief who might have resisted is gone. The interim chief answers to the mayor. The drafts are anonymous. The final product is clean. And when questions arise, the messenger gets blamed.

What Comes Next

The 3,000-plus plaintiffs suing over the Palisades Fire now have a new line of inquiry. If the after-action report was sanitized to shield the city from legal liability, every deleted paragraph, every softened finding, every revision between draft one and draft seven becomes discoverable material. The very act of concealment creates the evidentiary trail that concealment was supposed to prevent.

Bass's office has called for an independent review of the Lachman Fire mop-up. But calling for an independent review of one fire while allegedly tampering with the official report on the fire that followed is not transparency. It is triage.

Los Angeles deserves leaders who treat a disaster's aftermath as a reckoning, not a liability exercise. Thousands of families lost everything in the Palisades Fire. They are owed an honest account of what went wrong and why — not a document polished through seven drafts until it could no longer hurt the people responsible.

The report was supposed to tell Los Angeles what happened. Instead, it may tell us who the mayor was protecting.