Rumor Claims LA Mayor Karen Bass Was Pardoned By President Bill Clinton — Is It True?

A viral rumor claims that Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was pardoned by former President Bill Clinton for allegedly bombing the U.S. Capitol in 1983.

The rumor was posted on Facebook and quickly shared by hundreds of social media users. The post claimed that the mayor was a communist and the ringleader of "the group called M19." Is there any truth to this claim?

No, Karen Bass was not ever pardoned by President Bill Clinton, per Wikipedia, and she had nothing to do with bombing the U.S. Capitol. The claim that the Los Angeles mayor was involved in a group that bombed the U.S. Capitol in 1983 and was pardoned by the former president is a lie. The false claim was shared on social media and quickly spread disinformation about the mayor.

"In 1983, the Capitol was bombed," read the false post. "She was the ringleader. You know what else is interesting? Pardon by Bill Clinton. The bombing was carried out by a left-wing group called the M19. The M19 was radicalized by the South Los Angeles Venceremos Brigade. The South Los Angeles Venceremos Brigade was founded by communist Democrat Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass."

Despite the post being a ridiculous lie, it continued to spread on Instagram, Threads, and X as hysterical Trump followers demanded she be jailed.

The rumor was posted as President Donald Trump repeatedly attacked Mayor Bass due to her criticisms about his handling of immigration protests in Los Angeles, per The Los Angeles Times. The mayor is opposed to the president abusing his authority by sending in the military, calling his overreach "an all-out assault on Los Angeles."

The LA mayor accused the president of "ratcheting up chaos” by sending in the military against her wishes and the wishes of Governor Gavin Newsom.

“You can spin it any way you like,” she said. “But in my opinion, it’s a political agenda of provoking fear and terror.”

"We know that U.S. citizens have been detained, so it's basically indiscriminate," she added. "It's a wide net they have cast in order to meet Stephen Miller's quota of 3,000 people a day being detained around the nation."

The mayor did go to Cuba in the 1970s as a young activist with other progressives to learn about the country's free healthcare system, per the Associated Press. After Fidel Castro's death in 2016, she called his passing “a great loss" for Cubans, but she later apologized for her comments on Meet the Press after receiving backlash for praising the dictator.

“Lesson learned. Wouldn’t do that again,” she said. “Talked immediately to my colleagues from Florida and realized that that was something that just shouldn’t have been said.”

How so many people could believe President Clinton would pardon a woman accused of bombing the Capitol when a simple Google search proves otherwise is surprising. But then again, the current president did pardon the people who violently attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, per NPR, so maybe it isn't a stretch to imagine presidents pardoning violent criminals after all.