Garcetti Distances Himself From Scandals in Confirmation Hearing

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California Today

Eric Garcetti, the Los Angeles politician who was nominated to beryllium U.S. ambassador to India, faced questions astir caller intersexual harassment allegations successful his office.

Shawn HublerSoumya Karlamangla

Dec. 15, 2021, 8:49 a.m. ET

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Eric Garcetti has been nominated to service  arsenic  U.S. ambassador to India.
Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times

Six months ago, President Biden nominated Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles to beryllium U.S. ambassador to India. Since then, the confirmation process has been unusually slow.

That is partially due to the fact that Republicans person held up scores of the president’s nominations. But it is besides due to the fact that of turmoil successful the Garcetti medication and much mostly astatine City Hall.

On Tuesday, the politician yet testified earlier the Senate Committee connected Foreign Relations. To chopped to the chase, Garcetti denied knowing that a Los Angeles constabulary serviceman connected his information item had complained of intersexual harassment by a apical aide.

Responding to Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, the politician said helium “never witnessed” the alleged harassment, “nor was it brought to my attention.” If it had been, helium added, helium would person acted to halt it, saying that absorption to workplace abuses was “a halfway issue” for him.

The mild speech capped months of speculation implicit whether Los Angeles’s existent question of City Hall ungraded would outgo Garcetti a long-sought spot successful the Biden administration. Garcetti, who joined Biden’s interior ellipse aft ending his ain statesmanlike bid successful 2020, had astatine 1 constituent appeared to beryllium successful contention for a furniture post.

As the pandemic spiked successful Southern California, Garcetti took himself retired of the moving for a gig with the White House. He accepted the ambassadorial information successful July arsenic infections waned and the metropolis began to look up to adjacent year’s mayoral election, which helium can’t tally successful aft serving 2 terms. Since then, however, anxiousness astir homelessness and crime has risen, and City Hall has go the hub of a wider-than-usual array of corruption charges.

One City Council subordinate is successful federal prison and two more are nether indictment. A erstwhile lawman mayor is embroiled successful a bribery lawsuit and facing national charges. Garcetti’s main of unit spent respective months connected permission aft posting disparaging remarks connected a backstage Facebook leafage astir California governmental figures, including the 91-year-old labour icon Dolores Huerta. The erstwhile caput of the metropolis h2o and powerfulness section has agreed to plead blameworthy to bribery charges successful a lawsuit involving the metropolis attorney.

And past there’s the erstwhile subordinate of Garcetti’s information detail, who has sued the city, accusing the erstwhile lawman main of staff, Rick Jacobs, of intersexual harassment. Garcetti himself has not been charged successful immoderate of the cases, but the officer, Matthew Garza, has claimed that the politician knew that Jacobs, a well-known Los Angeles fund-raiser, was groping and harassing him and failed to halt it. The politician has repeatedly denied the charge.

In July, a lawyer for respective erstwhile City Hall employees wrote to the Senate committee, calling the alleged harassment “common knowledge.” By mid-fall, the mayor’s information inactive hadn’t gotten a hearing, adjacent though the committee had already precocious different perchance problematic picks — Rahm Emanuel, for example, who was politician of Chicago during a arguable constabulary shooting and is up for ambassador to Japan.

In November, a committee spokesperson confirmed that the senators were reviewing the intersexual harassment allegations “in detail.” On Tuesday, arsenic the Senate sheet convened, the erstwhile Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson tweeted that “we can’t support covering up abusive behaviour and let enablers to get distant with knowing astir it.”

But the committee, which volition ballot astatine a aboriginal date, seemed satisfied. Shaheen’s was the lone question astir the ungraded earlier the proceeding was chopped abbreviated to accommodate different votes successful progress.

Garcetti appeared with the ambassadorial nominees for Pakistan and Germany — Donald Armin Blome, a vocation diplomat, and Amy Gutmann, the president of the University of Pennsylvania — and promised to prioritize trade, greenish vigor and quality rights successful dealing with India, a captious strategical ally.

Shawn Hubler is simply a newsman for The New York Times who is based successful Sacramento.

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