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OC Dems Question Whether Irvine Mayor Leaked Controversial Texts from Congresswoman Katie Porter
VoiceOfOCLocal Democrats are questioning Irvine Mayor Farrah Khan over how controversial texts between her and Congresswoman Katie Porter were leaked to national media.
The texts in question came after a fight broke out at Porter’s first in-person town hall following the COVID-19 shutdowns last year, when a group of Porter critics began to insult the congresswoman and one of Porter’s supporters was arrested after throwing a punch at the hecklers.
Porter didn’t like how Irvine PD handled the protestors at her event.
In texts to Khan, Porter said she would “never trust them again,” when talking about the Irvine Police Department.
“Your police force is a disgrace,” Porter wrote.
That text comment eventually landed in national media.
There’s now a lot of questioning from residents over how the texts, which are public records, got to the national media.
Khan maintains that city officials simply released the texts between her and Porter to comply with public records requests by Fox News and CNN to see them, something authorized by California law.
“There were public records requests from CNN and Fox News for conversations between me, IPD, and the Congresswoman. I complied. I did not leak these,” Khan wrote in a tweet.
Yet the Irvine City Clerk’s office disputes that.
“A response was not provided to Fox News Digital until today,” wrote Isela Ruiz, a member of the city’s records staff, in an email posted by Irvine resident Michael Fox last Thursday on Twitter. “Therefore, the screenshot published in the article you shared did not come from our office, as these records were just made available.”
A review of the timeline doesn’t seem to add up.
Fox News broke the story on the texts on September 26, four days after they filed their records request, saying they’d exclusively obtained the texts.
Yet the city’s records department says they didn’t release the texts to Fox until Oct. 13, and CNN did not receive records until Oct. 3 according to city staff.
That means Fox News couldn’t have gotten the information via a public records request.
The texts in question came after a fight broke out at Porter’s first in-person town hall following the COVID-19 shutdowns last year, when a group of Porter critics began to insult the congresswoman and one of Porter’s supporters was arrested after throwing a punch at the hecklers.
Porter didn’t like how Irvine PD handled the protestors at her event.
In texts to Khan, Porter said she would “never trust them again,” when talking about the Irvine Police Department.
“Your police force is a disgrace,” Porter wrote.
That text comment eventually landed in national media.
There’s now a lot of questioning from residents over how the texts, which are public records, got to the national media.
Khan maintains that city officials simply released the texts between her and Porter to comply with public records requests by Fox News and CNN to see them, something authorized by California law.
“There were public records requests from CNN and Fox News for conversations between me, IPD, and the Congresswoman. I complied. I did not leak these,” Khan wrote in a tweet.
Yet the Irvine City Clerk’s office disputes that.
“A response was not provided to Fox News Digital until today,” wrote Isela Ruiz, a member of the city’s records staff, in an email posted by Irvine resident Michael Fox last Thursday on Twitter. “Therefore, the screenshot published in the article you shared did not come from our office, as these records were just made available.”
A review of the timeline doesn’t seem to add up.
Fox News broke the story on the texts on September 26, four days after they filed their records request, saying they’d exclusively obtained the texts.
Yet the city’s records department says they didn’t release the texts to Fox until Oct. 13, and CNN did not receive records until Oct. 3 according to city staff.
That means Fox News couldn’t have gotten the information via a public records request.
