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The former Los Angeles fire chief filed a legal claim against the city Wednesday, alleging that Mayor Karen Bass “orchestrated a campaign of misinformation, defamation, and retaliation” to protect her political image after the most destructive wildfire in city history.

Kristin Crowley and her lawyers accuse Bass of ousting her, and repeatedly defaming Crowley as Bass sought to shift blame for the way the city handled the catastrophic Palisades Fire “while concealing the extent to which she undermined public safety” with cuts to the fire department’s budget.

The legal claim alleges that Bass scapegoated Crowley amid mounting criticism of the mayor’s decision to attend a ceremony in Ghana on Jan. 7, when the fire erupted. Bass left Los Angeles despite her knowing of the potential severe winds and deadly fire danger, the claim alleges.

“As the Fire Chief, for nearly three years, I advocated for the proper funding, staffing and infrastructure upgrades to better support and protect our Firefighters, and by extension, our communities,” Crowley said in a statement to The Times. “The lies, deceit, exaggerations and misrepresentations need to be addressed with the only thing that can refute them — the true facts.”

Bass and the city had yet to respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Crowley’s lawyers say Bass “initially praised the department’s preparedness” and even portrayed the response positively. “But as criticism mounted over her absence, Bass reversed course,” the legal claim said. “She sought to shift blame to Crowley, falsely stating that Bass was not aware of the nationally anticipated weather event, that Crowley sent 1,000 firefighters home who could have fought the blaze, and misrepresenting the department’s budget…”

Bass removed Crowley on Feb. 21, six weeks after the firestorm that consumed Pacific Palisades, killing 12 people and destroying nearly 7,000 homes.

The mayor said she was demoting Crowley for failing to inform her about the dangerous conditions or to activate hundreds of firefighters ahead of the blaze. She also said Crowley rebuffed a request to prepare a report on the fires — a critical part of ongoing investigations into the cause of the fire and the city’s response.

According to her lawyers, Crowley had “repeatedly warned of the LAFD’s worsening resource and staffing crisis,” prior to the fire, and warned that “aging infrastructure, surging emergency calls, and shrinking staff left the city at risk.”

In the 23-page claim, Crowley said Bass cut the department’s operating budget by nearly $18 million that year and “eliminated positions critical to maintaining fire engines, trucks, and ambulances.”

After Crowley complained publicly that the budget cuts had “weakened the department’s readiness, Bass retaliated,” the lawyers allege. On Jan 10, after Crowley told FOX LA, “we are screaming to be properly funded,” Bass called her to the mayor’s office.

“I don’t know why you had to do that; normally we are on the same page, and I don’t know why you had to say stuff to the media,” the lawyers say Bass told the chief, but said she wasn’t fired.

The next day, retired Chief Deputy Ronnie Villanueva began working at the Emergency Operations Center, donning a Mayor’s office badge. Then Feb. 3, 2025, two weeks before Chief Crowley was removed from her position, Villanueva wrote a Report to the Board of Fire Commissioners identifying himself as Interim Fire Chief” — a position he now holds.

Crowley was eventually ousted and put on leave. Her lawyers allege Bass’s public accusation at the time that Crowley refused to participate in an after action report of the Palisades fire after being asked to by the Fire Commission President Genethia Hayes, a Bass appointee — was blatantly false and she was never asked.

A legal claim is a precursor to a civil lawsuit, and is required by California law when suing a government entity. In her claim, Crowley alleges Bass and her subordinates have conducted a “public smear campaign aimed at discrediting Crowley’s character and decades of service,” following her dismissal.

Crowley’s attorneys, Genie Harrison and Mia Munro, allege that Bass and others in her administration defamed Crowley, retaliated against her in violation of California’s labor code and violated Crowley’s First Amendment rights. Crowley is seeking unspecified damages above $25,000.

Harrison, who has represented numerous victims of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, said Crowley’s claim “presents her extensive advocacy efforts to obtain the funding and resources the LAFD needed to fulfill its public safety mission. It also shows Mayor Bass’ repeated refusals to provide those resources.”

Bass made the assertion about the failed deployment after an investigation by The Times found that Fire Department officials could have ordered about 1,000 firefighters to remain on duty as winds were building but opted against it. The move would have doubled the firefighting force on hand when fire broke out.

But Crowley and her lawyers say in the legal claim the “LAFD did not have sufficient operating emergency vehicles to safely and effectively pre-deploy 1,000 (or anywhere near 1,000) additional firefighters on January 7.” In simple terms, the department did not have the money or personnel “to repair and maintain emergency fire engines, fire trucks, and ambulances,” the claim alleges.

The Times investigation found the department had more than 40 engines available to battle wildfires, but fire officials staffed only five of them.

Crowley’s lawyers dispute that in the claim. They say “the LAFD staffed all its front-line fire engines (including all the 40 engines that Bass later falsely stated sat “idle.”

The U.S. Justice Department has launched an investigation into whether California, its interscholastic sports federation and the Jurupa Unified School District are violating the civil rights of cisgender girls by allowing transgender students to compete in school sports, federal officials announced Wednesday.

The Justice Department is also throwing its support behind a pending lawsuit alleging similar violations of girls’ rights in the Riverside Unified School District, said U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, who oversees much of the Los Angeles region, and Assistant Atty. Gen. Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

Transgender track athletes have come under intense scrutiny in recent months in both Jurupa Valley and Riverside, with anti-LGBTQ+ activists attacking them on social media and screaming opposition to their competing at school meets.

Essayli and Dhillon, both Californians appointed under President Trump, have long fought against transgender rights in the state. Their announcements came one day after Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from California for allowing transgender youth to participate in sports.

The legal actions are just the latest attempts by the Trump administration to scale back transgender rights nationwide, including by bringing the fight to California — which has the nation’s largest queer population and some of its most robust LGBTQ+ legal protections — and targeting individual student athletes in the state.

Both Trump in his threats Tuesday and Essayli and Dhillon in their announcement of the investigation Wednesday appeared to reference the recent success of a 16-year-old transgender track athlete at Jurupa Valley High School named AB Hernandez. Trump wrongly suggested that Hernandez had won “everything” at a recent meet — which Hernandez didn’t do.

In a comment to The Times on Wednesday, Hernandez’s mother, Nereyda Hernandez, said it was heartbreaking to see her child being attacked “simply for being who they are,” and despite following all California laws and policies for competing.

“My child is a transgender student-athlete, a hardworking, disciplined, and passionate young person who just wants to play sports, continue to build friendships, and grow into their fullest potential like any other child,” her mother said.

The mother of another transgender high school track athlete in Riverside County who is the subject of the pending lawsuit the Justice Department is now backing declined to comment Wednesday.

The Justice Department said it had sent letters of legal notice to California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, state Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, the California Interscholastic Federation and Jurupa Unified.

The U.S. Department of Education had previously announced in February that it was investigating the CIF for allowing transgender athletes to compete. Dhillon said the two federal departments would coordinate their investigations.

Bonta has defended state laws protecting transgender youth, students and athletes, and advised school systems and other institutions in the state, such as hospitals, to adhere to state LGBTQ+ laws — even in the face of various Trump executive orders aimed at curtailing the rights of and healthcare for transgender youth. On Wednesday, his office said it remained “committed to defending and upholding California laws.”

Scott Roark, a spokesman for the California Department of Education, said his agency could not comment. Jacquie Paul, a spokesperson for Jurupa Unified, said the school system had yet to receive the letter Wednesday, and “without further information” could not comment. A spokesperson for the Riverside Unified School District also declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.

The CIF, in a statement, said it “values all of our student-athletes and we will continue to uphold our mission of providing students with the opportunity to belong, connect, and compete while complying with California law and Education Code.”

However, the sports federation also changed its rules for the upcoming 2025 CIF State Track and Field Championships, saying a cisgender girl who is bumped from qualifying for event finals by a transgender athlete would still be allowed to compete and would also be awarded the medal for whichever place they would have claimed were the transgender athlete not competing.

The changes brought renewed criticism from advocates on both sides of the political issue, including Chino Valley Unified school board President Sonja Shaw. Shaw is a Trump supporter running for state schools superintendent who has challenged pro-LGBTQ+ laws statewide and supports the latest investigation. She said that, in making the changes, CIF was “admitting” that girls “are being pushed out of their own sports.”

Dhillon said her office’s “pattern or practice” investigation will consider whether California’s laws and the CIF policies violate Title IX, a 1972 federal civil rights law prohibiting sex discrimination in educational programs and activities that receive federal funding.

Title IX has been used in the past to win rights for transgender people, but the Trump administration has taken a strikingly different view of the law — and cited it as a reason transgender rights must be rolled back.

Dhillon said the law “exists to protect women and girls in education,” that it is “perverse to allow males to compete against girls, invade their private spaces, and take their trophies,” and that her division would “aggressively defend women’s hard-fought rights to equal educational opportunities.”

Essayli said in a statement that his office would “work tirelessly to protect girls’ sports and stop anyone — public officials included — from violating women’s civil rights.”

LGBTQ+ advocates, civic institutions in California and many Democratic lawmakers in the state have denounced the framing of transgender inclusion in sports as diminishing the rights of women and girls and accused Trump and other Republicans of attacking transgender people — about 1% of the U.S. population — simply because they make for an easy and vulnerable political target.

Kristi Hirst, co-founder of the public education advocacy group Our Schools USA, said the Justice Department’s actions amounted to “bullying minors and using taxpayer resources to do so,” and that a “better use of public dollars would be for the Justice Department to affirm that all kids possess civil rights, and protect the very students being targeted today.”

The “pattern or practice” investigation is the second such investigation that Dhillon’s office has launched in the L.A. region in as many months. It’s also investigating Los Angeles County over its process for issuing gun permits.

Essayli’s separate decision to back the Riverside lawsuit adds another wrinkle to an already complicated case.

The group Save Girls’ Sports is suing over the inclusion of a transgender athlete in a girls’ track meet in October, a decision they allege unfairly bumped a cisgender girl from competition, and over a decision by high school officials to block students from wearing shirts that read, “IT’S COMMON SENSE. XX [does not equal] XY,” a reference to the different chromosome pairings of biological females and males.

Julianne Fleischer, an attorney with Advocates for Faith & Freedom who is representing Save Girls’ Sports, said Wednesday that Essayli’s decision to weigh in on behalf of the group was welcome.

“This case has always been about common sense, fairness, and the plain meaning of the law,” Fleischer said in a statement. “Girls’ sports were never meant to be a social experiment. They exist so that girls can win, lead and thrive on a level playing field.”

It was unclear how the case would be affected by Essayli’s interest.

The state and school district are asking for the lawsuit to be dismissed. A hearing is scheduled next month.

Essayli, formerly a state Assembly member from Riverside County, made his name in politics in part by attacking what he has called the “woke” policies of California’s liberal majority in Sacramento. Shortly before he was appointed as U.S. attorney last month, other California lawmakers blocked a bill he introduced that would have banned transgender athletes from female sports.

Hernandez, the mother of the targeted Jurupa Valley athlete, said Trump and other officials were bullying children by “weaponizing misinformation and fear instead of embracing truth, compassion and respect,” and asked Trump to reconsider.

“I respectfully request you to open your heart and mind to learn about the LGBTQ+ community,” she said, “not from the voices of fear or division, but from the people living these lives with courage, love and dignity.”