Fbi Searches Home Of Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Over A Bomb Threat At City Hall

FBI agents searched the home of Los Angeles Deputy Mayor Brian Williams this week as part of an investigation into a bomb threat made against City Hall, where Williams oversees public safety.

The threat came earlier in the year and was quickly investigated by the Los Angeles Police Department, which concluded there was no imminent danger and referred the investigation to the FBI, Zach Seidl, a spokesperson for Mayor Karen Bass, said Wednesday.

City police department officials in a statement said their initial investigation found Williams was “likely” the source of the threat, and that they referred the case because the deputy mayor supervises their department.

Williams has since been placed on administrative leave.

“The Mayor takes this matter very seriously,” Seidl said in a statement.

Williams could not immediately be reached for comment. The FBI declined to issue a statement about the investigation, saying only that no one had been arrested.

Williams was appointed by Bass in 2023 to oversee the police department, fire department and other divisions as the city’s deputy mayor of public safety. He was also on Los Angeles’ “crisis response team” and previously served as the executive director of the Los Angeles County Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission.

The incident marks the second time this year in which Bass has found herself in close proximity to a strange public safety situation. Just this spring, an intruder broke into the mayor’s residence, an unnerving incident that underscored Angenelos' already heightened concerns about crime.