Former Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Brian K. Williams will plead guilty to falsely telling law enforcement a bomb had been placed in City Hall last year.
Williams was employed as the deputy mayor of public safety in October 2024 under Mayor Karen Bass and has been charged with one felony count of making an explosives threat after police found no such threat existed.
The former deputy mayor alerted Bass and other high-ranking city staff in a text message on Oct. 3, 2024, that someone had called him and threatened to bomb City Hall.
“The male caller stated that ‘he was tired of the [city’s] support of Israel, and he has decided to place a bomb in City Hall. It might be in the rotunda,’” Williams wrote in the text, according to prosecutors.
Police were sent to the building, but no threat was revealed. Williams showed police that he had received a call from a blocked number supposedly from the person who made the threat.
Prosecutors determined that Williams made the call to himself, for reasons that are unclear.
The FBI searched Williams’s home in December 2024, and he was placed on administrative leave. The former deputy mayor will appear in federal court in the next few weeks.
“In an era of heated political rhetoric that has sometimes escalated into violence, we cannot allow public officials to make bomb threats,” U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli said in a statement. “My office will continue its efforts to keep the public safe, including from those who violate their duty to uphold the law.”
HOUSE PASSES LANDMARK ‘ONE BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL’ TO DELIVER TRUMP’S TAX CUTS
Williams faces up to 10 years in prison. Bass expressed disappointment in Williams through spokesman Zach Seidl.
“Like many, we were shocked when these allegations were first made, and we are saddened by this conclusion,” Seidl told the New York Times.