The Brief

Across L.A. and around the world people were grappling with the complicated feelings stirred up by the death of former football legend turned accused murderer, Orenthal James Simpson, known as O.J. Simpson.

Simpson was 76 and had been battling cancer. In a post on X, his family said he died on Wednesday surrounded by his children and grandchildren.

An 'operatic' story

LAist's daily news program AirTalk host Larry Mantle opened up the phone lines Thursday and was met with a flood of conflicting reactions, so difficult to tease out, so hard to process fully and fairly. We will be compiling a few of them here.

Mantle gave voice to it at the top of the show, discussing how globally famous the trial became — The Trial Of The Century — and the racial reckoning that followed.

“It’s all so operatic, so huge,” Mantle said. “It's still hard for me to get my head around O.J. Simpson's life and everything that swirled around him.”

What one reporter has to say about her long connection to Simpson

Linda Deutch, a former Associated Press special correspondent who covered some of L.A.’s biggest trials, including every day of Simpson’s, told AirTalk she hadn’t spoken to the former Buffalo Bills running back in about a year.

“The last time I talked to him, he was, he was fine,” she said. “He said he was playing golf every day. He was very happy that he was a grandfather now. His family kept in touch with him and came to visit him and things were very quiet with him, which is [how] he liked it.”

Simpson did start a podcast about football in retirement, which Deutsch said is almost a footnote compared to the high-profile crimes he was accused and acquitted of.

When Simpson later served nine years for stealing merchandise in Las Vegas, Deutsch said it was “kind of unbelievable” that that was what he ended up going to jail for.

“He found it very interesting to get to know all the other prisoners,” she said. “He started a library for them, taught some people to read. He made the most of it … the best that he could while he was in there.”

Deutsch had already covered the Manson family trials, the Menendez brothers trial, and the 1992 Rodney King beating trial — but Simpson’s was televised.

How the trial changed views of the court system

That didn’t affect how she followed the case, but Deutsch said it changed her life in many ways.

“I would watch TV every day, several times a day, because I would come out of [the] courtroom and go down to the lobby of the criminal courts building and all the TV stations would be there to get my pool report,” she said.

Jessica in Pasadena wrote in an email to AirTalk that she was one of the many people who took off work to watch the trial.

“I'll never forget when the verdict came in where I was and the feeling of sickness in my stomach that the jury got it wrong,” Jessica wrote. “Juries can get it wrong, but DNA doesn't lie.”

Deutsch said even the DNA in the case was corrupted, and she would have acquitted him too because they didn’t prove the case.

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After the trial, Simpson wrote a book called If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer. Mantle pointed out that while he maintained his innocence, he wrote a book with a chapter that details how he would have gotten away with it — why?

“For money,” Deutsch said with a laugh. “That's the only thing I can figure, that he got paid for it.”

Deutsch said she believes he later regretted that decision, as Simpson referred to the case as the worst thing that’s ever happened in his life.

An American hero turned pariah

Simpson had been an American hero, Deutsch said, and then suddenly he was a pariah.

“My point was that he was not a likely person to be a symbol of law enforcement abuses against African Americans because he, prior to this, really didn't put himself into a racial category, didn't see that as central to his identity," she said. "But of course, during the trial and the criminal justice system's treatment of African Americans comes front and center, and at that point, his identity as a Black man is very much a part of what's happening in the courtroom and in the public consciousness of the trial."

A Martínez, host of NPR’s Morning Edition who also traveled with the Dodgers for a decade, told AirTalk he’s seen athletes have a private persona that was completely different from how they acted when cameras were around.

“I think that became very obvious when we finally found out about O.J. Simpson and how he treated his wife, Nicole [Simpson],” Martínez said.

Tony in West Hollywood told AirTalk that Simpson may have been acquitted, but he was abusive as a spouse, and we had the evidence of that.

Martínez said that shattered the perception of the fun, friendly guy in the Hertz commercials and Naked Gun movies.

About the low speed chase

Chris in Larchmont Village brought up the low-speed freeway chase of the Ford Bronco and the nationwide “media circus” around it.

Martínez said every possible emotion was brewing as he watched the chase unfold.

“I mean, you couldn't get up to go to the bathroom, you couldn't get up to drink water,” he said. “Every other part of being a human was gone because your eyes were glued to that screen and there was nothing you could do to move you away from it until you saw what was gonna happen.”

Martínez said one word comes to mind for Simpson — wondering. Wondering what really happened the night Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson were killed, wondering what would have happened if Simpson never tried on the gloves and sparked the phrase, “If the gloves don't fit, we must acquit.”

“Now that O.J. is gone, I think we'll be wondering pretty much for the rest of our lives,” he said.

But Deutsch point out that Simpson always maintained his innocence.

“He always told me the same thing — 'I didn't do it,'” she said. “And he said he didn't know who did it.”

L.A. County residents could soon be getting more transparency about payouts to county executives after LAist revealed a secretive $2 million settlement with the county’s CEO.

Citing LAist’s coverage, Supervisor Lindsey Horvath is proposing to require the county to publicly post details of all future settlements with county executives. It’s scheduled for approval by the full Board of Supervisors on Dec. 2.

What Horvath says

Horvath’s motion says the settlement with CEO Fesia Davenport “was only disclosed in response” to LAist’s public records request, and that otherwise “it is not at all clear how the public generally would have any idea that a settlement was reached.”

The county supervisors “can do more to make the public aware of how the Board conducts business and how public funds are being spent,” she added.

The backstory

Last month, LAist brought to light that the county had quietly paid a $2 million settlement in August to Davenport. The settlement had been kept under wraps from the public and county workers.

The settlement was in response to her claims that the supervisors harmed her reputation and caused her distress by putting a measure before voters — which was approved — that will create an elected county executive position. It’s among multiple reforms to restructure county government under last year’s voter-approved proposition, known as Measure G.

What Horvarth is proposing

Among other things, her motion would order county officials to report back in 60 days “on pathways to improve transparency for settlements with County executives” — including creating a public online dashboard showing “as much settlement-related information” as allowed by law.

That would include details like the executive’s name, the dollar amount and when it was approved.

Multiple executive payouts

Davenport was one of several county executives who’ve gotten sizable settlement payouts over the past few years.

Her predecessor as county CEO, Sachi Hamai, was paid $1.5 million, plus full-time private security funded by taxpayers over her claims that she faced “brutal” harassment by the then-sheriff.

Four additional county executives received payouts, according to Davenport’s claims that led to her settlement.

A legal document filed on behalf of California State University was riddled with faulty quotes and other telltale signs of being AI generated, an administrative law judge said this week, prompting Cal State to acknowledge that artificial intelligence had been used to help create the document.

Administrative Law Judge Bernhard Rohrbacher ordered that a CSU legal filing featuring “phantom quotations” from a 1981 court decision be struck from the record of a case pending before the California Public Employment Relations Board.

The order filed Monday is part of a proceeding pitting the nation’s largest public four-year university system against the CSU Employees Union, which is seeking to represent an estimated 1,400 students serving as resident assistants in college housing around the state.

Rohrbacher wrote that while “there is no proof that AI was, in fact the author” of a Cal State brief, the document “bears all the hallmarks of the hallucinations associated with AI-generated texts” and contains a series of misquotes Cal State failed to explain.

A Nov. 10 case filing by Cal State said that the mistakes were due to a “failure to double-check correct page numbering” and “erroneously included quotation marks around paraphrasing statements.” But in a written statement on Wednesday, a university system spokesperson acknowledged the brief had been written with AI assistance.

“The CSU is aware that a staff member used artificial intelligence, without conducting due diligence, to assist with creating a brief that resulted in errors undermining the integrity of their work,” said CSU spokesperson Jason Maymon. “This action does not align with the CSU’s ethical and responsible use of AI, and we are taking appropriate steps to address this matter.”

The order comes as Cal State aims to become a leader in integrating generative artificial intelligence into higher education. It could also have implications for the bid to unionize CSU’s resident assistants, who typically receive benefits like free housing and a campus meal plan but no salary in exchange for helping manage more than 67,000 dorm beds at Cal State campuses.

The CSU Employees Union in March moved to absorb resident assistants — whose wide-ranging responsibilities can span everything from organizing dorm socials to responding to student emergencies — into an existing unit of more than 17,000 student workers. Cal State has opposed the effort, saying resident assistants are not employees but “live-in student leaders.”

“If students submit assignments with AI-generated half-truths and fabrications, they face consequences. And yet the CSU is doing exactly what we tell students not to do,” said Catherine Hutchinson, president of the CSU Employees Union, in a written statement. “Resident assistants provide valuable services to their campus communities, so it is shameful that the CSU would waste the time and resources of California’s Public Employment Relations Board in an attempt to quash their right of union representation.”

Maymon said Cal State “is proud to lead the adoption of AI in higher education. But just like every institution that has embraced navigating this new terrain, challenges will surface. This presents an opportunity for the CSU to fine-tune our AI trainings so that our students, faculty, and staff receive the information and professional development to fully leverage the benefits of this new technology.”

Judge called misquote ‘a stretch’

A Nov. 3 brief from Cal State repeatedly quoted from a single federal appellate court decision to support its argument that resident assistants, typically called RAs for short, should not be considered employees. But Rohrbacher, the administrative law judge, said he could not find a series of quotes and page citations in the original decision, which stems from a decades-old lawsuit involving Regis, a private college in Denver.

For example, in passages that purported to quote the court’s decision, the Cal State brief said that the relationship between RAs and their college is “primarily educational rather than economic in nature” and that RAs, therefore, are not employees.

But that statement and several others do not appear in the appellate court decision CSU cited, Marshall v. Regis Educational Corporation. Rohrbacher said the misquote “is certainly a stretch” and undermines Cal State’s argument for citing the Marshall case. California law in 2018 dropped language defining certain students as employees “only if the services they provide are unrelated to their educational objectives” or if educational goals are secondary to such services, Rohrbacher noted.

“It is therefore curious that the University interprets Marshall to imply such a requirement, making that case inapplicable here,” Rohrbacher wrote. “That assumes, of course, that generative AI was not the author.”

In striking the Cal State brief, Rohrbacher stopped short of direct accusations. But the administrative law judge said Cal State had failed to explain its mistakes, writing that regardless of whether AI wrote the brief, “these are not the kind of ‘errors’ or acts indicating a run-of-the-mill ‘lack of diligence’ … that could be ignored.”

Rohrbacher did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment for this story. He previously served as general counsel for the California Faculty Association, according to his LinkedIn profile, the union representing CSU employees, including professors, librarians and coaches.

Vying to be the ‘first and largest AI-empowered university’

Cal State in February announced a $16.9 million deal with OpenAI to purchase enterprise access to ChatGPT, part of a strategy to become “the first and largest AI-empowered university system.” It has also launched a new CSU board that includes state officials and industry representatives from companies like Anthropic and Nvidia. Campuses around the system have recently moved to add a cluster of AI-related degree programs.

While some within CSU have embraced those steps, they have also provoked worries about how the technology will impact the way students learn and professors teach. Critics have also raised concerns about protecting student and faculty data privacy, and the cost of CSU’s investments in artificial intelligence at a time of difficult budget cuts and job losses.

As part of its work on AI, CSU has published guidelines about the ethical use of the technology. Rohrbacher quoted a section in a footnote of the order striking CSU’s brief.

“Content generated by AI can sometimes be inaccurate, deceptive, or completely fabricated, also known as ‘hallucinations,’ and might inadvertently include copyrighted material,” the guidelines read. “It is your responsibility to vet any AI-generated content before dissemination.”

New releases from Jeffrey Epstein's estate shine additional light on the array of powerful figures who kept ties to the disgraced financier after his criminal charges came to light.

Spread throughout the roughly 23,000 documents released by the House Oversight Committee last week, emails and texts show Epstein courted prominent politicos from both sides of the aisle, impressed academics and used his connections to push back on negative stories about his alleged crimes.

Epstein's career as a wealthy financier who gave money to universities and other causes put him in many elite circles.

Those circles did not entirely close to him after he pleaded guilty to state charges of solicitation of prostitution and of solicitation of prostitution with a minor under the age of 18 in 2008.

Reading through the text messages and emails released, the people who consulted with Epstein rarely acknowledged the severity of the crimes that required him to register as a sex offender, though simply corresponding with Epstein does not implicate individuals in his criminal activities, convicted or accused.

There's an apparent letter of recommendation for Epstein from linguist Noam Chomsky, calling him a "highly valued friend," that recalled how Epstein connected him with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak — another frequent Epstein correspondent.

"Jeffrey constantly raises searching questions and puts forth provocative ideas, which have repeatedly led me to rethink crucial issues," the letter reads.

There's advice Epstein gave to Steve Bannon, Trump's former strategist, about ways to build a far-right political movement overseas.

"If you are going to play here, you'll have to spend time, [E]urope by remote doesn't work," Epstein wrote in 2018. "Lots and lots of face time and hand holding. Europe can be a wife not a mistress."

Former Harvard University president and onetime Treasury Secretary Larry Summers is documented numerous times having intimate personal chats with Epstein, including asking for romantic advice and joking about women's intelligence.

"I yipped about inclusion," wrote Summers in 2017. "I observed that half the IQ [in the] world was possessed by women without mentioning they are more than 51 percent of population...."

Summers resigned as Harvard's president in 2006 after arguing that women may be innately less capable in math and science.

In the week since the latest Epstein emails release, he has resigned from the board of OpenAI and abruptly left his teaching role at Harvard, as the university announced a probe of "information concerning individuals at Harvard included in the newly released Jeffrey Epstein documents to evaluate what actions may be warranted."

Summers isn't the only high-profile Democrat who found themself in varying degrees of Epstein's orbit. Kathryn Ruemmler, former White House counsel in the Obama administration and current chief legal officer for Goldman Sachs, messaged with Epstein before and during Trump's first term.

"Trump is living proof of the adage that it is better to be lucky than smart," she wrote in August 2015.

"I regret ever knowing Jeffrey Epstein," Ruemmler told The Wall Street Journal in 2023.

More than a thousand mentions of Trump

A protester holds a sign related to the release of the Jeffrey Epstein case files outside the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Nov.12. President Trump signed the congressional legislation that directs the Department of Justice to release the files late Wednesday evening.

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Saul Loeb

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AFP via Getty Images

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Trump promised to release the Epstein files on the campaign trail but largely stonewalled the effort this year since he returned to office, frequently calling the push for more transparency around the Epstein case a "hoax" perpetrated by Democrats.

In a Wednesday Truth Social post announcing the signing of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, Trump said Democrats were using the issue to distract from what he says are victories for his administration.

"Perhaps the truth about these Democrats, and their associations with Jeffrey Epstein, will soon be revealed, because I HAVE JUST SIGNED THE BILL TO RELEASE THE EPSTEIN FILES!" he posted.

The president has the authority to release the files without congressional action.

Trump is a frequent subject of emails and text messages in the latest file tranche — well over a thousand different mentions — though mainly the subject of Epstein's near-obsession with his presidency, as the latter positioned himself as a Trump whisperer of sorts to his powerful associates.

This week, after an abrupt reversal that led to the near-unanimous approval of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the president has now called for Democrats mentioned in Epstein's communications to be investigated by the Justice Department.

"I will be asking A.G. Pam Bondi, and the Department of Justice, together with our great patriots at the FBI, to investigate Jeffrey Epstein's involvement and relationship with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, Reid Hoffman, J.P. Morgan, Chase, and many other people and institutions, to determine what was going on with them, and him," Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Other Republicans are going on the offensive too — highlighting revelations that Epstein was texting Democratic Del. Stacey Plaskett of the U.S. Virgin Islands during a House Oversight Committee hearing with Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen in 2019.

Comparing the newly released messages with the video of the hearing, minutes after Epstein suggested Plaskett ask Cohen things about the Trump Organization, Plaskett posed similar questions.

An effort to censure Plaskett in the House failed Tuesday. In a floor speech, Plaskett defended her actions as receiving information from a constituent and said it was "not public knowledge at that time that he was under federal investigation."

Amid the partisan finger-pointing around the Epstein files, some of Epstein's accusers are imploring the president not to make things partisan and focus on the other powerful people that they say haven't faced scrutiny — regardless of political party.

What's next for the government's Epstein files?

Within 30 days of Trump signing the Epstein Files Transparency Act, the attorney general is supposed to make "all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials" available in a searchable and downloadable format.

That includes information that relates to Epstein, his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell and "individuals named or referenced in connection with Epstein's criminal activities."

There's also a focus on information regarding plea deals and decisions not to charge Epstein for other alleged crimes, as well as documents pertaining to his 2019 death by suicide in federal custody.

Over the summer, the FBI put out a memo that said their files include "a significant amount of material, including more than 300 gigabytes of data and physical evidence."

Some of that includes photos and videos of Epstein's accusers, including minors, and disturbing material that will not be made public. The bill from Congress also says anything "that would jeopardize an active federal investigation or ongoing prosecution" can be withheld or redacted, too.

With Trump's ordering of the investigation into Democrats and financial institutions mentioned in the Epstein correspondence, it is unclear how much of the Justice Department's files will be released, to what extent they will be redacted and when they ultimately will be made public.

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