The Huntington Beach City Council on Tuesday night censured Councilmember Natalie Moser for what the council majority called “inappropriate” statements made in an argument at a previous meeting during discussions about the city’s human dignity statement.
Three of the councilmembers, including Moser, walked out of the room during the item’s discussion, leaving the four-member majority to pass the censure 4-0-3. The censure has no punishment attached.
Moser, who typically votes in lockstep with the other two councilmembers, called the censure the “weaponization of council procedures for political gain.”
At the end of the council’s Aug. 1 meeting, Councilmembers Moser and Gracey Van Der Mark got into an argument when Moser questioned if Van Der Mark had denied the Holocaust had occurred and had associations with the Proud Boys. Van Der Mark responded immediately it was a lie and the meeting quickly ended.
Moser’s questions came when the council was voting to create an ad hoc committee to update the city’s policy on human dignity. That policy, which was updated on Tuesday night, is substantially shorter and removes previous references to eliminating hate crimes.
During Tuesday’s meeting, a video was played of Van Der Mark speaking on May 7, 2018, at the City Council, before she was a councilmember, where she repudiated the accusations she denied the Holocaust.
She said others had “irresponsibly labeled me a bigoted due to videos stored on my YouTube account for research purposes only,” Van Der Mark said in 2018. “I was questioning the content, not supporting it. I do not, nor have I ever, denied the Holocaust.”
Councilmember Pat Burns called Moser’s Aug. 1 comments inappropriate and out of line. “There was no place for it the other night,” he said.
“(Van Der Mark) was accused of it back then, she defended it, she’s done it since then, but yet it’s ignored by people who want to weaponize a lie,” Burns said.
In a joint…
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