California State Assembly Member Cristina Garcia in a visit to Los Cerritos Community Newspaper in 2012.
By Brian Hews
[email protected]
Friday Feb. 23, 2018, 2:50 p.m.
Last week, the San Diego-based Gilleon Law Firm sent a letter to the California State Assembly Rules Committee outlining graphic and explicit sexual harassment allegations against Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia from four former employees.
The new allegations roiled what was once a promising career for Garcia.
The allegations included Garcia drinking in her office while on official business, bragging about her sexual activity while describing various sex acts in detail, stating she had sex in her office with other elected officials to leverage information, using vulgar language, harassing employees, and disparaging other high-level elected officials.
In addition, they alleged Garcia asked the staffers to fundraise and ask for donations during regular working hours.
Just days later, a second POLITICO report wrote about other Garcia staffers alleging sexual harassment, including Garcia demanding they play “spin the bottle” after a fundraiser and drinking from a “Kegerator” at her office.
The reports and Gilleon letter came just days after Garcia had sent out a statement as Chair of the Legislative Women’s Caucus demanding a zero-tolerance policy on sexual harassment allegations against other legislators.
Garcia with the Legislative Women’s Caucus.
“We appreciate the commitment to publicly release the outcomes of the sexual harassment and misconduct investigations so that we can ensure transparency. With this information comes the ability to act and uphold the zero tolerance policies of both the Senate and Assembly that have not always been followed.”
“The transparency will foster an environment that enables the culture change we must have in our Capitol community where harassment of any kind is not tolerated or excused for any reason.”
Garcia appeared on CBS This Morning and denied all allegations of sexual harassment saying, “That’s definitely not anything that happened. I’m not engaging in sex for information or for votes.”
Now, Garcia will have to explain why she took donations from a known anti-feminist porn publisher.
A Hews Media Group-Community News investigation has found that the embattled Assemblywoman, who has claimed she is a feminist and a silence breaker, took $7,000 from Larry Flynt’s anti-woman empire, Hustler, as well as from the infamous pornographer himself, Larry Flynt, a man who once said, “I’ve always felt that feminism is an excuse for ugly women to march,” and who publishes other porn magazines including “Barely Legal.”
The donations were made in May of 2013 for $1,000; Sept. 2013 for $1,500; Mar. 2015 for $2,500; Sept. 2015 for $1,000; and April 2016 for $1,000.
Data from the National Institute on Money in State Politics showing Flynt donations to Asm. Garcia
Flynt claims to be a champion for women’s rights but his brand of pornography is uniquely damaging to women. He is known to promote images portraying violence against women; Gloria Steinem has repeatedly taken Flynt to task for publishing disturbing anti-woman images.
Flynt attempted to give money to Hilary Clinton in her bid for the presidency but once detected, Clinton’s campaign promptly returned the funds.
In a response to a request for comment, Garcia’s Communications Director Teala Schiff told HMG-CN, “the [sic] member is on leave from her position in this office so how would you suggest she give comment when she’s gone?”
HMG-CN contacted Dan Gilleon of the Gilleon Law Firm who is representing four former Garcia staffers. When told about the donations Gilleon said, “to me it is more of the same Garcia hypocrisy, it is why my four clients came out in the first place, it shows Garcia is not the #MeToo feminist she claims to be.”
Copyright – Hews Media Group, all rights reserved, re-publication by attribution only.
Mr Hews,
I’d wish you were equally aggressive in your reporting on Mendoza as you are on Garcia. As reported in the Sacbee:
Mendoza “spent his off-hours trying to pick up young women while sucking up campaign money from payday lenders and casinos. Card rooms, apartment owners, insurance companies, liquor distributors, labor organizations and pest control operators gave $87,000 over the years to his legal defense fund. He had needed it. In 2016, the Fair Political Practices Commission fined him $63,000 for violating campaign finance law, hardly chump change.”
Your bias is pretty obvious…
Not quite following. The story context is sexual harassment allegations against Garcia, donations from a porn publisher who treats woman terribly is relevant to Garcia claiming she is MeToo feminist….the donations you point out to Mendoza have nothing to do with his harassment charges…
It’s not the content of your story but the obvious journalistic bias towards one member over the other. Frankly, stories like this should come out to keep them honest.
But yet you’re “Truth” finding stories have yet to dig up anything on Mendoza, and I’m sure he has several skeletons in his closet, but somehow you manage to dig up gems like this one on Garcia. Why is that?
Mendoza just resigned from office the other day; Garcia is still in office. Leave the author alone.
It’s about journalistic integrity. It’s about keeping them honest while in office. Which I feel he didn’t. Mendoza would’ve probably resigned last year if more people knew about his harassment issues.
It’s not the content of your story but the obvious journalistic bias towards one member over the other. Frankly, stories like this should be told.
But yet you’re “Truth” finding stories have yet to dig up anything on Mendoza, and I’m sure he has several skeletons in his closet, but somehow you manage to dig up gems like this one on Garcia. Why is that?