The embers weren't even cold yet when the buzz began. Speculation and theories began to flow that Karen Bass's Los Angeles was stiff-arming the thousands of victims of the Palisades Fire. Vows she made to quickly process claims and permits to rebuild was simply empty talk. Between Bass, Gov. Gavin Newsom, and then-President Biden, there was "a cascading failure of government" on display for anyone with eyes to see.
And now, the attorney for 4,000 of those victims has confirmed the worst: "It's happening."
Sure, you'd expect an attorney for more than half of the 7,000 homeowners who lost their homes when the Pacific Palisades fire was triggered — Jan. 1, 2025, not Jan. 7 — to blame the people he's suing for this disaster. The volunteer firefighter and lawyer, however, represented many victims of the 2023 Lahaina Fire, and knows what he seeing.
First, the good news. On May 6, the California Court of Appeals stomped out the last hot cinder of defense that Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass put up to stop the victims from moving forward with their lawsuit against the government.
#BREAKING NEWS🚨 The California Court of Appeal just DENIED the writ petitions filed by the State of Calfornia and City of Los Angeles. The City and State have lost their appeal to overturn the trial court's denial of their demurrers to the fire victims' master complaint. The… pic.twitter.com/aHaqa2RGXl
— 415FirePhoto (@415FirePhoto) May 6, 2026
Plaintiffs' attorney, Trey Robertson, however, confirmed the worst on my Adult in the Room Podcast livestream on Thursday. Robertson said the very people who systematically failed to protect the thousands of homes as a historically bad Santa Ana windstorm was bearing down on the Southern California tinder dry area were now constructing ways to steal their property.
"Steal" is a strong word, but this what is happening, in effect. People who can't afford to wait years to rebuild, due to Bass's slow-rolling the permitting and rebuilding process, are now forced to walk away from the home they inherited, and give up their only chance of trying to salvage their old lives.
The state's environmental policies sacrificed people to save plants, and then worked with pliant Los Angeles Fire Department brass to not put out the precursor fire, the Lachman Fire, which a millionaire-hating Luigi Mangione fanboy set on Jan. 1, 2025. Gavin Newsom's State Parks department purposely withheld court-ordered production of documents, and when they were finally turned them over to the victims, they contained smoking-gun evidence proving their case. One text message that proved their case by admitting that the Lachman Fire was not out the day after Los Angeles firefighters cleared the scene. An LAFD officer told a state parks official in another text that he was so trained on the state's environmental rules that he patted himself on the back for not bringing in heavy equipment to put out the fire on state land.
Enraging: LA Careens From Cruelty to 'Environy' Against Palisades Fire Victims With This Latest Move.
There was no water in the reservoir that could have been used to fight the fire. Tankers weren't called in within the critical first two hours to stop the blaze that started at 10:30 a.m., according to Robertson. When they were finally deployed, state environmental laws forbade them from scooping up water from the Pacific Ocean a short distance away. The tankers were diverted to Malibu and Encino reservoirs, causing a delay in putting water on the fire.
Cops were diverted to work on President Joe Biden's detail. Robertson contests that when the conflagration was at its worst and people were fleeing in their cars for their lives, requests for motorcyle cops to direct traffic were denied. They were too busy with Joe.
Gov. Gavin Newsom was in town, and diverted firefighters to pose in his photo ops. Mayor Karen Bass was in Ghana on a trip for Biden. The vice mayor in charge of public safety was unavailable. He was on house arrest for calling in anti-Semitic death threats to his own city council meeting.
The Palisades Fire destroyed 7,000 homes and killed 12 people.
Good Question: Where's the Water, Gavin?
Newsom vowed to commission an independent study. The study, not done independently, but by state officials, and concluded, in Robertson's words, "Oh, it wouldn't have mattered anyway. Nobody could have stopped the fire."
At the 48:48 minute mark of our podcast interview, I asked, "The obvious question is, was that part of the plan? I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I've seen too much. I'm the Adult in the Room."
Robertson replied, in part:
I wonder. A lot of people have have you know postulated that. I don't know, but I, you know, I was involved in the Maui fire town of Lahaina. A lot of those local residents said the same thing. This is a land grab. And sure enough, after the fire and after the smoke clears, the politicians start in and say, Well, we're going to start creating these regulations and restrict rebuilding. And the same thing has happened in Palisades, where they've said, "Oh, we want, uh, high density housing, low-income housing to be built next to these mass transportation sites, these bus stops, etc." And people are saying, "Why can't we just rebuild our town the way it was?"
He said, "Why do you get to [plan it]? You took away the water, and you did all these things that caused the fire; you allowed embers to smolder on your state park property. You burn our town down and then you tell us we can't rebuild our house the way it was, and we now have to accept your wiping the slate clean and coming up and redrawing all of the zoning laws to create the type of town that you want instead of the way it used to be."
"It's happening."
Because of immunity, Robertson can't sue the city and state outright for negligence. He's instead suing on a "takings" theory of inverse condemnation against the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
And that DEI lady that Karen Bass hired who was in charge of LAWDP? She left town to take a job in Puerto Rico.
Robertson knows where to find her.
Watch our entire interview below. You might, however, want to have an adult beverage at your side to steel yourself.
