Biden Calls for LA City Councilors to Resign Over Audio Leak

President Joe Biden delivers remarks at the IBM facility in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., on Oct. 6, 2022. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

President Joe Biden joined a group of officials calling for three Los Angeles City Councilors who took part in a racially charged conversation to resign, according to the White House press secretary Oct. 11.

“I spoke to him about it yesterday [Oct. 10],” Karine Jean-Pierre said at a White House briefing. “He believes that they all should resign. The language that was used and tolerated during that conversation was unacceptable,” she said. “It was appalling. They should all step down.” 

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre speaks to reporters in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 6, 2022. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

After a torrent of criticisms from politicians and community groups, Nury Martinez resigned as the council’s president on Oct. 10 after audio recordings of her “racist” conversation last year with three other local officials—Councilmen Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo and Los Angeles County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera—were leaked over the weekend.

A wave of officials and political candidates condemned the remarks and called for all the involved officials to resign from their posts.

Hallie Balch, regional director of communications for the Republican National Committee, issued a statement criticizing the comments made during the taped conversation.

Balch criticized Martinez for issuing “a classically lukewarm apology that we have come to expect from Democrats who get caught,” and de León and Cedillo for failing to stop Martinez “from making her vile comments,” while they “chimed in with their own jokes and commentary.”

Though Los Angeles County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera has since resigned, none of the three councilors involved in the conversation have stepped down as of the afternoon of Oct. 11. Earlier in the day, Martinez announced she is taking a leave of absence from the council.

Nury Martinez attends Women's March Action: March 4 Reproductive Rights at Pershing Square in Los Angeles on Oct. 2, 2021. (Amy Sussman/Getty Images)

“This has been one of the most difficult times of my life and I recognize this is entirely of my own making,” Martinez said in a statement. “At this moment, I need to take a leave of absence and take some time to have an honest and heartfelt conversation with my family, my constituents, and community leaders. I am so sorry to the residents of Council District 6, my colleagues, and the city of Los Angeles.”

On Oct. 10, a group of elected officials including Councilman Marqueece Harris-Dawson and Assembly members Isaac Bryan (D-Los Angeles) and Tina McKinnor (D-Inglewood) also held a news conference calling on the three councilors to immediately resign their council seats.

(L) Karen Bass in Los Angeles on April 14, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. (Leon Bennett/Getty Images)
(R) Rick Caruso in Los Angeles on Aug. 12, 2019. (Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Caruso)

LA Mayoral candidates Rick Caruso and Rep. Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) both called for the trio to resign.

“I do believe that in their hearts they are better people than the vile comments we heard on that tape,” Caruso said in a statement. “But they also know they are role models and they have let our city down. Being a leader means taking full responsibility for your actions. In this important moment for our city, anything short of resignation completely fails that test.”

Bass said the city “must move in a new direction, and that is not possible unless the four individuals caught on that tape resign from their offices immediately.”

Councilors Mike Bonin, Curren Price, Nithya Raman, and Heather Hutt also called for the resignations, as did Mayor Eric Garcetti, City Attorney Mike Feuer, Controller Ron Galperin, U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), local Reps. Tony Cárdenas, Adam Schiff, and Ted Lieu, and an array of community and political organizations, including the Los Angeles County Democratic Party and county Supervisors Sheila Kuehl and Hilda Solis.

Gov. Gavin Newsom condemned the remarks without calling for resignations.

Councilman Mike Bonin attends the Palisades Village grand opening private ribbon-cutting ceremony at Palisades Village in Los Angeles on Sept. 22, 2018. (Amanda Edwards/Getty Images)

In the recorded conversation—which originally was posted on Reddit before being removed Oct. 9—Martinez made disparaging comments aimed at Bonin’s 2-year-old Black adopted son and at other ethnic groups while the group discussed the politically sensitive process of redrawing council district boundaries.

Martinez spoke about Councilman Mike Bonin’s black son as “Parece changuito”—which is translated to “like a little monkey”—while recalling seeing Bonin’s son on a float during a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade, where she said the child was like “an accessory.”

De León chimed in and said Bonin treats his child the same way as “when Nury brings her Goyard bag or the Louis Vuitton bag.”

Martinez appeared to suggest Bonin’s son was misbehaving on the float, and if she and another woman didn’t step in to “parent his kid” the float may have tumbled over.

“They’re raising him like a little white kid,” Martinez was heard saying. “I was like, ‘this kid needs a beatdown,’ let me take him around the corner, and then I’ll bring him back.”

During the conversation, Martinez used multiple slurs in Spanish to describe Bonin’s son.

The Epoch Times obtained and reviewed a copy of the recording, but it was unclear who taped the conversation and released it. The meeting reportedly occurred at an office of the Federation of Labor, which is investigating the source of what it said to be the “illegal recording.”

City News Service contributed to this report.