Politics
The real reason LA’s DA is suddenly talking about the Menendez brothers
UPDATE (Oct, 24, 2024, 5:30 p.m.): L.A. District Attorney George Gascón said in a press conference on Thursday that he will ask a court to resentence Erik and Lyle Menendez and make them eligible for parole “immediately.”
Like millions of Americans, I’ve been riveted by “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” the hit Netflix series about the two Beverly Hills brothers who murdered their parents in 1989. Some of showrunner Ryan Murphy’s work is too campy for my tastes, but this time around he nailed it, helped by a superb cast anchored by Javier Bardem (Jose Menendez, an entertainment executive) and Chloë Sevigny (his aimless wife, Kitty).
The series also appears to have a fan in George Gascón, the Los Angeles district attorney. Earlier this month, the 70-year-old prosecutor announced he was reviewing the Menendez convictions, which saw them sentenced to life in prison in 1996. “Given the totality of the circumstances, I don’t think they deserve to be in prison until they die,” he has said.
The Menendez brothers have developed quite a fan base online in recent years, and Gascón is clearly playing to a social media audience.
The brothers could be set free, or face a lighter sentence. I am not sure if that’s the right call — but I do have the queasy feeling that Gascón is only using the Menendez case as a last-ditch effort to escape defeat on Election Day.
To his credit, Gascón has overseen 14 exonerations of unjustly convicted people. Only I don’t think that’s happening here. Instead, a politician in trouble is exploiting a tragedy. And make no mistake, Gascón is in big trouble, trailing law-and-order candidate Nathan Hochman by 30%, according to a recent poll conducted by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies and the Los Angeles Times (with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points).
Hochman has said that the “timing is incredibly suspicious.” Yes, he also has a political stake here, just like Gascón. Which is what makes this whole matter so unseemly: The district attorney has turned the troubled brothers into a political prop.
An opportunity to change the narrative
Enter the Menendez case.
Last year, the brothers’ attorneys submitted a writ of habeas corpus in which they claimed the murder was an act of “imperfect self-defense, after a lifetime of physical and sexual abuse from their parents.” They also submitted new evidence, including a letter Erik, then 13, wrote to a cousin: “Every night I stay up thinking he might come in.” The petition additionally includes an allegation from Roy Rosselló, a former member of the boy band Menudo, that “he was anally raped twice, and orally copulated, by Jose Menendez.”
Gascón announced his renewed interest in the Menendez case on Oct. 3. As Kathy Cady, an attorney for Kitty Menendez’s brother, notes, that same day, the Los Angeles Times ran a new story about Shanice Amanda Dyer, a member of the Crips who had killed two people, seemingly at random, when she was 17. Gascón tried her as a juvenile, in keeping with his progressive philosophy. A short stint in prison, and Dyer was out, soon to be arrested for a suspected Pomona killing.
Gascón’s office told me that he “has a legal right to request that the court re-sentence the brothers to a lesser sentence if they have been rehabilitated.” But for Cady, who says her client has been kept in the dark by the prosecutor’s office, this is yet another example of Gascón’s “callous disregard” for the victims of crime.
The Menendez brothers have developed quite a fan base online in recent years, and Gascón is clearly playing to a social media audience, as if his constituency were entirely in cyberspace. In one cringeworthy TikTok clip, he hypes himself up to a Sabrina Carpenter soundtrack. Some of the comments are rather revealing. “I’ve never been more invested in California politics until now,” wrote a user who said she was from Mississippi. There are a lot of heart emojis and the like, with little questioning of his motives. At least online, Gascón has gotten the reaction that he sought. The real world is another matter.
From LA to cop to LA’s top cop
Gascón used to be a cop in Los Angeles, later became the chief of police in Mesa, Arizona, and eventually became San Francisco’s district attorney (a post vacated by now-Vice President Kamala Harris, who had been elected California’s attorney general at the time). Then, in 2019, Gascón announced he was moving to Los Angeles, where he would run for district attorney on a progressive platform.
I have the queasy feeling that Gascón is only using the Menendez case as a last-ditch effort to escape defeat on Election Day.
My own view is that criminal justice reform is inherently at odds with the prosecutor’s role — it’s like asking the bartender to preach sobriety. Progressive prosecutors set themselves up for failure by radically shifting the priorities of an office most people expect to charge alleged criminals with crimes. And they often neglect to explain their policies in ways that are free of jargon.
Gascón never allayed the anxieties of his critics, instead supplying them with ever more evidence, like charging some suspects of serious crimes with misdemeanors or recommending mental health treatment instead of prison for assailants with histories of violence.
OK, you’re thinking, it’s entirely possible that Gascón is a deeply flawed prosecutor and politician. Even so, he could still be right about the Menendez case. Having him win a second term might just be the price we have to pay for the brothers to finally get the fair hearing they have long deserved. (Although, there’s no indication at this point that the Menendez case has boosted Gascón’s poll numbers.)
Except there is no reason to believe this was a miscarriage of justice. There is no dispute about who killed Kitty and Jose Menendez as they watched TV on a summer Sunday night. The cops didn’t swab the brothers for gunpowder residue, as they should have, but there was no incompetence of the kind that would mark the imminent trial of O.J. Simpson.
Alan Abrahamson covered the first Menendez trial (which allowed for an airing of abuse allegations and ended in a hung jury; they were convinced at a second trial, the scope of which was more limited) for the Los Angeles Times and came to the conclusion that “the brothers are skilled liars who prey on the emotions of those who do not understand the presence of evil in our world,” as he wrote recently in The Free Press.
Yes, we see the case differently than we did 30 years ago, when our ears were not as attuned to the abuse of boys and men. But the brothers were not convicted of being entitled rich kids, which was the prevailing perception of them at the time. They went to prison for killing their parents. With shotguns. In cold blood. That was true then, and it is true now.
During their two trials, the Menendez brothers told their story with practiced eloquence and seemingly genuine emotion. They were represented by some of the most talented defense counsel available in Los Angeles. The jury heard the defendants out and found them guilty. The case was closed. By cynically reopening it, Gascón is impugning the work of the very same criminal justice system he supposedly represents. Angelenos deserve better.
WASILLA, Alaska — Three weeks out from Election Day, President Donald Trump took a helicopter to a plane to another helicopter to a motorcade to an ice hockey rink in Alaska’s Matanuska-Susitna Valley, traversing nearly 4,000 miles over more than eight hours to turn out his base here to help Republicans defend the Senate.
But Trump’s trek might not be enough to save Sen. Dan Sullivan, who’s running in a tougher-than-expected race against Democrat Mary Peltola in a state where the president’s approval rating is underwater and independents outnumber both Republicans and Democrats.
Alaska strategists and voters who spoke to Blue Light News acknowledged that Sullivan faces a difficult path to reelection, despite Trump’s time investment and the outside money pouring in.
“Very conservative MAGA voters can’t vote for you harder,” said Scott Kendall, a veteran political strategist who worked on two of Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s campaigns and was chief of staff to former Alaska Gov. Bill Walker. “Donald Trump’s support in this current climate is both a blessing and a curse.”
Even some Trump supporters at the Tuesday night rally admitted the outlook appeared bleak.
“I think Alaska’s turning blue,” said Matt Niessink, a 45-year-old general contractor from Wasilla. He said he had voted for Trump three times and planned to support Republicans this year.
What did he wish the president would do differently? “I wish he’d shut his mouth sometimes and not be such a pompous ass,” Niessink said.
The president was in Wasilla — population 10,556 — because the outlook is darkening for his party in a state he carried by 13 points just two years ago. In a midterm year defined by the cost of gas and groceries, the Last Frontier has been hit particularly hard, with the average price of diesel nearing $7 per gallon. In the Senate race, Peltola is flush with cash and leads Sullivan in most polls. MAGA Inc., the cash-rich Trump-aligned super PAC, is increasingly focusing on Alaska as one in a slate of states that can help Republicans hold the Senate.
Enter Trump, who has been spending the cycle’s crucial final weeks holding rallies in red states to juice support among his base, which tends to see depressed turnout in years when he’s not on the ballot.
“That was a lot of flying,” the president said at the top of his remarks. “In fact, they were thinking about canceling. They said, ‘Sir, you’re very busy, this is very tough.’” But, Trump continued, he refused to cancel for a state he won three times.
Echoing his comments at other red-state rallies, Trump asked the roaring crowd for “one big favor” — to “pretend that I’m on the ballot, because every time I’ve been on the ballot, we win.” He repeated his promise that Americans will receive $5,000 dividends if Republicans hold both chambers.
“What this is about is getting out the vote,” Sullivan told reporters before Trump’s speech. “A rising tide of enthusiasm lifts all the candidates.”
Unlike some other Republican candidates in tight races, Sullivan has shied away from distancing himself from the least popular aspects of Trump’s presidency.
Sullivan proclaimed on stage at the rally that “the conflict in the Middle East is temporary. The true forever war is the national Democrats’ war against Alaska oil and gas and our jobs.” And although a campaign aide released a statement condemning Trump’s move to import Russian diesel, Sullivan did not join four of his Republican Senate colleagues, including Murkowski, who called on Trump to reverse the decision.
Art Hackney, a veteran Republican strategist in Alaska, said that “most of the people who support” Sullivan “think that he should” break more with the president.
Hackney, who runs a pro-Sullivan super PAC called “We Stand with Dan,” attributed that choice to loyalty — but suggested the president’s demand of fealty, and treatment of frequent dissenter Murkowski, could also be part of Sullivan’s calculus.
“A lot of his longtime supporters and the people who are in the industries that would benefit from that wish he would be more blunt,” Hackney said. “But with what Murkowski has done, if Dan did something considered a disrespectful trigger or something, what do you think would happen? It could well have implications for things that affect Alaska’s economy.”
Like this content? Consider signing up for Blue Light News’s Playbook PM newsletter.
Some top congressional Republicans have privately concluded that it is likely impossible for them to keep control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, and they are now focused on limiting the scale of the defeat and salvaging the party’s Senate majority.
Five senior Republican lawmakers, all granted anonymity to speak candidly about their party’s dire position, told Blue Light News the House had all but slipped away.
One senior House Republican said the GOP’s goal at this point was to “save as many Republican seats as we can.” The president, this person said, was not helping.
“President Trump has made this election all about himself,” the lawmaker said. “Now we have to survive that political storm.”
A second Republican member of Congress said the movement of campaign advertising made plain which side was in control of the midterms. This lawmaker predicted Democrats would pick up about 10 seats, more than enough to take control of the chamber.
Even in newly redistricted red states like Florida and Texas, this person said, Republican candidates were “hanging on with their fingernails.”
Republicans have already fallen back from several contested House districts that they feel are no longer winnable, including those held by Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa and Tom Kean Jr. of New Jersey. Trump carried their districts just two years ago. The party last week gave up on an Omaha-based district held by retiring Rep. Don Bacon.
Trump officials and other top GOP operatives say more candidates may be cut off in the coming days, in order to shift advertising money to races where it can make more of a difference. Republican groups have already given up on multiple races where they once hoped to unseat Democratic lawmakers.
The Republican Party is under extreme pressure across the Midwest, where it is now spending heavily to defend Senate seats in once-reliably MAGA states like Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas.
Bacon, a maverick often at odds with the White House, said there was no mystery in his party’s political tribulations.
“I’ve talked to some who are making these decisions: The biggest problem is the president’s polling numbers and unfavorables,” Bacon said.
White House officials insist they’re not giving up on either chamber of Congress. In a statement, White House spokeswoman Liz Huston said Trump remained “committed to maintaining Republican majorities in both the House and Senate.”
As he departed on Tuesday to campaign in Alaska for embattled GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan, Trump professed optimism about the midterms but acknowledged that sitting presidents typically see their party lose seats in the off year.
“But I’m doing a tour right now and I’m doing rallies,” Trump added. “The level of enthusiasm for the Republican Party is way up.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson went even further, flatly declaring during a campaign stop in deep-red Texas that “the polling is wrong” in showing his party on the brink of a broad defeat.
Yet at a tactical level, the Republican Party’s moves to shift money away from defending the House and toward saving the Senate are clear enough. In recent days, the Congressional Leadership Fund, the top super PAC for House Republicans, canceled advertising for key House candidates in Nebraska and Iowa and allowed the Senate Leadership Fund – a Republican group focused on the upper chamber – to swoop in and claim the airtime to support Nebraska Sen. Pete Ricketts and Rep. Ashley Hinson, who is running for Senate in Iowa.
“These are not the moves of a party that’s going to keep the House,” a third Republican lawmaker said.
In statements to Blue Light News, both CLF and the National Republican Congressional Committee said they had no intention of giving up on the fight for control of the House.
NRCC spokesperson Mike Marinella said districts are won “one by one,” and that the GOP has “the financial firepower and ground game needed to win.”
Chris Winkelman, president of CLF, said his group would keep moving money around to maximize the impact nationally.
The goal, he said, was to “keep the pressure on the most vulnerable Democrats and preserve a path to 218 seats.”
Former Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a Florida Republican who lost his swing seat in Trump’s first midterm election eight years ago, said his former colleagues were clear-eyed about where the election seemed to be headed.
“The environment is about as tough as one could expect,” Curbelo said. “There is no one who has privately stated that they believe Republicans can hold the House — not in recent weeks, anyway.”
Megan Messerly, Lauren Fedor, Lisa Kashinsky and Myah Ward contributed to this report.
Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff said Tuesday he will not run for president in 2028 and committed to serving a full six-year Senate term if reelected.
“I have zero interest in running for president. I’m not running for president. I’m running for reelection to the Senate,” Ossoff said during a Georgia Senate debate against Republican Rep. Mike Collins.
Asked by Greg Bluestein of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution whether he would serve his full term if he wins in November, Ossoff replied: “Yes, I will.”
The remarks are Ossoff’s most forceful rejection yet of a potential 2028 presidential bid even as his name has repeatedly surfaced in national Democrats’ conversations about possible contenders for the party’s nomination. His public commitment to a full Senate term on Tuesday is the latest of his campaign’s many efforts to tamp down that speculation.
Ossoff gained national attention this year given his strong fundraising numbers, his consistent lead in public polling against Collins and his ability to generate viral moments on the campaign trail, particularly through his attacks on President Donald Trump. Democrats are bullish about Ossoff’s ability to hold onto his Senate seat — so much so that the Democratic-aligned Senate Majority PAC said Tuesday it was removing its ad spending in Georgia for the week.
He’s also taken steps to boost the state Democratic party in Georgia, a perennial battleground that has been and will be key to winning the presidency. If November brings historic wins up and down the ballot, Ossoff will get some of the credit — and he’ll have confirmed his status as a leader in the swing state.
-
Politics2 years agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
Uncategorized2 years ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
The Josh Fourrier Show2 years agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
Politics2 years agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
The Dictatorship2 years agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
Politics2 years agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words