YouTuber Jake Paul.

After hosting a barnburner of a party in his Calabasas, Calif., mansion on Saturday amid the state’s latest surge in new coronavirus cases, YouTuber Jake Paul found himself at the center of controversy again, drawing the wrath of Mayor Alicia Weintraub.

The party footage, which emerged on social media, showed hundreds of unmasked partygoers crowding around the living room, the staircase and the TV. Some of the guests were playing beer pong outdoors, while others were dangling from a yellow mobile excavator’s arm, seemingly like some kind of joke. It did not seem that social distancing was taking place.
From social media messages, it appears that the party doubled as a music video shoot.

“They have this big party, no social distance, no masks, it’s just an enormous disregard for everything everyone is trying to do to make things work again,” Weintraub told Fox 11. “It’s really just a party acting like Covid doesn’t exist, it’s acting like businesses aren’t closed.”

Weintraub told The Washington Post via email, “The City of Calabasas will enforce zero tolerance for large gatherings that defy the local public health order.” I am committed to keeping our neighborhood secure and we are trying to ensure compliance with the Lost Hills Sheriff Station to look for possible steps that the City might take. Nobody can behave as there is no COVID-19 because everybody has to act professionally in order to preserve our whole society.

“The Fox 11 report added that “angry neighbors called” the station “and sent their own video of the group they shot, but refused to be interviewed.

For Paul, it was a contentious year, even by his standards. “He made a career out of inserting himself into new national stories, often in controversial ways, such as when he visited Parkland, Fla., in the aftermath of the shooting of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and offered a five-point plan to end school shootings, or when after Hurricane Harvey he took a catastrophic trip to Houston to save thousands of lives.

At the end of May this year, videos emerged showing him in a crowd of people plundering the Scottsdale Fashion Square mall in Scottsdale, Ariz., during a series of national demonstrations calling for social justice following George Floyd’s murder. The video did not appear to show anything being robbed or destroyed by Paul, and Paul denied looting.

He was accused by many users of taking advantage of the demonstrations to spread his own celebrity. Musician Lauren Sanderson wrote: “To the world’s jake paul’s, those EMBODYING white privilege, publicly victimizing themselves for being tear gassed, but it is beyond acceptable to appear with vlog cameras only to loot and trash the city.” If you don’t come to fight for a black soul, don’t come here at all.

 

Days later, police charged Paul with illegal trespass and unlawful assembly in Scottsdale, Ariz., all of which are misdemeanors.
Paul did not respond to a request for comment, nor did he answer the social media party.