LOS ANGELES — Journalist Yashar Ali has filed a defamation lawsuit against Los Angeles Magazine one year after the publication ran a nearly 6,000-word feature that he says labeled him as someone who “backstabbed his friends to get ahead” and mischaracterized his journalistic standards.
In a sprawling June 9, 2021, feature that called Ali a “Twitter Power Broker,” Los Angeles Magazine delved into his career and personal life. The feature painted a negative profile of Ali’s work ethics and detailed his various relationships with celebrities and politicians, including comedian Kathy Griffin.
In 2020, Ali said Mayor Eric Garcetti’s top adviser, Rick Jacobs, forcibly kissed him on the lips and hugged him over the course of a decade. Ali worked in Democratic politics before becoming a freelance journalist and worked as Gavin Newsom’s deputy chief of staff when Newsom was mayor of San Francisco.
