YouTuber Jake Paul’s latest controversy saw Calabasas Mayor Alicia Weintraub call him out for hosting a party in the middle of a global pandemic.
The outrage began after FOX 11 found social media footage of a July 11 party at Paul’s $6.925 million Calabasas mansion. The video shows several mask-free people mingling much closer than six feet apart and swinging from a piece of construction equipment. According to FOX 11 reporter Bill Melugin, Paul’s neighbors also sent him footage of the same party, though none wanted to be interviewed.
Weintraub said that several “outraged” people called her about the party after the footage surfaced, according to Vanity Fair.
“It’s just a big, huge disregard for everything that everybody is trying to do to get things back to functioning. It’s really just a party acting like COVID does not exist, it’s acting like businesses aren’t closed,” she said.
Calabasas has since announced it’s taken a zero-tolerance stance on house parties and will fine people who don’t wear a mask in public.
Though Paul may have been the most high-profile individual to throw a party in Calabasas lately, Weintraub told the L.A. Times that he wasn’t the only one. She cited a recent wedding reception and a baby shower attended by more than 200 people.
As for Paul, he addressed the party in a recent video after a friend brought up his “scandals.”
“I haven’t been in a scandal, I’ve been in a false accusation,” he said, adding that he told guests to get off the construction machinery, saying it was a “liability.”
He did not address the whole no-masks-no-social-distancing-in-a-pandemic thing in the video, which also features a — not socially-distant — striptease from adult performer Emily Willis and a very cute golden retriever.
Paul was fired from the Disney Channel’s “Bizaardvark” in 2017 after KTLA reported he was annoying his Beverly Grove neighbors with pranks, loud parties and general mischief, such as putting furniture in an empty swimming pool and lighting it on fire.
In June, Paul was charged with two misdemeanors, criminal trespassing and unlawful assembly, after he posted a video to Instagram that showed him inside the Fashion Square Mall in Scottsdale, Arizona on May 30 during an instance of rioting and looting. Paul argued he wasn’t participating, rather, he was documenting the situation.