Aldon Smith’s family is searching for answers about the former NFL star’s unexpected death on Saturday after delivering pizzas to a California homeless charity. He was 36.
A friend of Smith found him unresponsive in his truck after the food delivery, a local pastor told to ABC station KGO-TV. He was later pronounced dead at a hospital in San Jose.
The family announced on Tuesday that they’re pursuing an independent investigation into Smith’s death. A cause of death has not yet been determined, they noted.
“We understand that there is a great deal of interest in and speculation about Aldon Smith’s passing and we intend to get to the bottom of it,” the family attorneys said in a statement sent to ABC News. “To that end, we have taken a number of steps including sending his brain to Boston where medical experts will examine it for CTE [chronic traumatic encephalopathy] as well as other damage caused by years of concussions and additional trauma.”
Smith, a former defensive lineman for the San Francisco 49ers who also briefly played for the Oakland Raiders and the Dallas Cowboys, quickly rose to fame as a star rookie in 2012. He retired in 2023.
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, is a brain disease linked to repeated hits to the head, often seen in military veterans and athletes including football players, hockey players and boxers. It causes symptoms like memory loss, mood changes, confusion and trouble thinking clearly, which usually appear years after the head trauma.
The family said that Smith suffered multiple concussions during his NFL career.
Smith, who played for the Missouri Tigers in college, rose to fame quickly after he was drafted into the NFL but his rise to stardom was hindered by a series of legal issues that included 10 arrests in nine years, according to ESPN.
The legal hurdles that Smith faced include three arrests on suspicion of driving under the influence, including a hit and run, an arrest for felony weapons charges and arrests for battery and domestic violence, ESPN reported. He was also suspended for violating the league’s personal conduct and substance abuse policies before being conditionally reinstated in 2020.
Smith, who launched an initiative to help young athletes navigate the pressures of a high-profile career, reflected on his struggles in an interview that was posted on YouTube four days before his death. It is unclear when the interview was recorded.
“I’ve definitely had better days,” he told “Laced Up” host Tee Maultsby.
“I’m just struggling accepting how it’s playing out right now,” he added. ” “To be honest, I’m grateful man.”
The family hired national civil rights attorneys Harry Daniels, Bakari Sellers and Wayne Kendall to coordinate the investigation into Smith’s death. They also said that civil rights leader Bishop William Barber II has been providing them with spiritual guidance as they mourn.
“In the meantime, we simply ask you to keep Aldon’s family in our prayers and respect their privacy as they struggle to come to grips with this terrible loss,” the family attorneys said.
The San Francisco 49ers released a statement on Saturday mourning Smith’s death, noting that the team is “devastated” by his sudden death.
“Aldon’s undeniable talent and sheer dominance on the field were on display from the moment he joined our organization, having recorded one of the best rookie seasons the National Football League has seen,” the statement said. “Beyond his excellence as a player, Aldon will be remembered for his infectious smile that lit up every room he walked into.”
ABC News’ Liz Neporent contributed to this report.
The Walt Disney Co. is the parent company of ABC News and ESPN.

Fifteen people in Minnesota were charged with conspiracy to impede or injure federal officers over their response to a controversial and deadly immigration enforcement crackdown in the state earlier this year.
The US attorney for Minnesota, Daniel Rosen, and the special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations for Minnesota, Michael McCarthy, announced the charges at a press conference in Minneapolis on Tuesday.
The prosecutors allege the defendants were part of two Minneapolis-based “antifa” groups that “violently oppose immigration law enforcement”. The indictment names the two groups as Direct Action Minnesota and Black Cat Worker’s Collective, which it described as a subgroup.
Of those charged, 12 people were arrested on Tuesday and one was already in custody on other federal charges, according to officials, who said two remain at large.
The new charges come as other cases from the federal government against protesters have fallen apart. The US attorney’s office’s track record with charges filed related to the crackdown, which was known as “Operation Metro Surge”, was the subject of media questions during the press conference. MPR News noted that the office has so far dropped 18 of its 36 prior cases, including one where a judge called a charging document a “false affidavit”.
With these new charges, Rosen said, “the evidence will prove it all out”.
Rosen showed social media posts and videos of a couple of the people indicted to underscore the allegations that they intended to impede law enforcement. In one video, a man declares he is antifa and discusses bringing guns to a demonstration. He showed another post of a defendant saying people needed to “become ungovernable”.
Antifa, which is short for “antifascist”, is not a specific group, but rather a decentralized movement, but last fall, the Trump administration categorized “antifa” as a “domestic terror organization”. Rosen did not define what “antifa” was, saying it went “beyond the scope” of today’s indictment.
Outside the federal courthouse in Minneapolis on Tuesday, a group of dozens of people gathered to speak out against the charges, including Nekima Levy Armstrong, who was charged in a separate case involving a protest at a church. Signs among the crowd carried messages such as “stop FBI entrapment” and “protesting is not a crime”.
At the demonstration, Bruce Nestor, a former president of the National Lawyers Guild, spoke to the crowd, saying: “What’s wrong with being ungovernable?” Nestor described the charges as “thought crimes” and an “act of political retribution” designed to quell dissent.
Rosen did not answer repeated questions about whether any agents or officers were injured by the defendants. The indictment does not allege officers were injured, though it mentions kicking a federal vehicle and knocking notes from an agent’s hands.
“Whether or not they actually at the end of the day caused bodily harm is not the measure of whether or not they committed a serious crime,” he said.
The Trump administration sent in thousands of immigration agents to Minnesota starting in late 2025, in part predicated on fraud allegations against Somali residents. The crackdown led to protest and a broad community response, from people monitoring agents to providing food for those staying home. Agents killed two people – Renee Good and Alex Pretti – in the streets, leading to further protest.
The agents who killed Good and Pretti have not faced charges. Rosen said during the press conference that the killings were under investigation, and charges could be possible.
The charges are the latest attempt by federal prosecutors to crack down on opposition to immigration enforcement.
Rosen also alluded that there could be more charges as they continue investigating response to the Minnesota crackdown. “If you are actively conspiring to impede law enforcement … you ought to go on the assumption that we’re watching, and we’ll get you,” he said.
The indictment mentions rapid response networks, which came together to track immigration agents’ vehicles as they were arresting people around the state. It also discusses how defendants used the encrypted chat app Signal to coordinate among people who were monitoring activity by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Rosen called these tactics “stalking” and noted how one of the defendants followed an agent from the federal building in St Paul to western Wisconsin.
It cites activities at the federal Whipple building in St Paul, where immigration agents were headquartered, saying the defendants set up “hard” and “soft” blockades to impede agents’ abilities to do their jobs. These hard blockades consisted of debris, vehicles or physical items, while soft blockades included people lined up with shields.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration secured its first successful conviction on the basis of “antifa” terrorism in the Prairieland case in north Texas, following a non-fatal shooting at a 4 July 2025 noise demonstration, in a case with 22 defendants across federal and state charges.
The Minnesota defendants do not currently face terrorism charges. Rosen said the indictment filed on Tuesday reflected charges that the office has the evidence to convict over.
In Spokane, Washington, three activists were convicted of conspiracy charges over an anti-ICE demonstration. The federal government also charged six people in Illinois with conspiracy over a protest at the Broadview detention facility, though the government later dropped the charges amid claims of prosecutorial misconduct.
Kat Abughazaleh, one of the six charged at Broadview, noted on Bluesky that the Minneapolis charges mirror the ones she faced.
“We need to be asking how they got this indictment. And as charges (hopefully) get dropped, we must remember the process is the punishment,” she said.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s top diplomat said Tuesday that the tentative deal to end the war with the United States would require Israel to withdraw from Lebanon — a condition Israel has already rejected and that could sink the agreement, leading to the resumption of all-out war.
The deal, which is between the U.S. and Iran, has not been made public, and officials have sometimes offered contradictory interpretations of what is in it. While Israel is not party to the agreement, it is part of the war: It joined the U.S. in launching strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, and has since fought the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon and seized large swaths of that country.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Israel’s continued occupation of southern Lebanon would violate the deal.
“Without the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the territories they occupied during this war, the war has not fully come to an end,” Araghchi said.
A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss outlines of the agreement, has said the deal did not call for an Israeli withdrawal. And Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that Israel would remain in Lebanon “as long as necessary.”
The negotiations to end the war have been plagued by such disagreements before, leading to a prolonged but uneasy ceasefire that has failed to develop into a permanent end to hostilities and has left the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for the world’s energy supplies, effectively shut.
In other developments, Switzerland’s foreign ministry said the signing ceremony for the deal will take place Friday at the Bürgenstock resort near the city of Luzern. Ministry officials said Tuesday that the location was proposed by Pakistani and Qatari mediators, along with the U.S. and Iran.
Lebanon tests the durability of the deal
Pakistan, a key mediator, has said the deal called for an end to military operations, including in Lebanon, as Iran long insisted. But Araghchi’s call for an Israeli withdrawal adds a new wrinkle.
It puts Israel into a dilemma as it tries to degrade Hezbollah’s military capabilities without undermining an agreement championed by its most important ally, the United States. Israel invaded southern Lebanon after Hezbollah fired missiles across the border during the first week of the war. Since then, it has expanded its military footprint to levels unseen in decades and struck targets deep inside Beirut.
Though Hezbollah has been weakened, it retains the ability to strike Israel, leaving open questions about the effectiveness of Israel’s campaign.
As of Tuesday evening, Netanyahu had not seen the memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran, said a person familiar with the situation, who requested anonymity to discuss closed-door details. Netanyahu’s office did not immediately respond to request for comment from The Associated Press.
The extent of Israel’s strikes have at times opened a public fracture between its leaders and U.S. President Donald Trump, who told reporters Tuesday that he was “not happy with the way Israel has handled themselves with Lebanon and with Hezbollah.”
“It just goes on forever,” he said of Israel’s strategy. Israeli strikes in Lebanon have killed nearly 4,000 people, including hundreds of civilians, and displaced more than 1 million. “Israel’s fighting Hezbollah too long, and too many people are being killed,” he said.
Trump said he’s open to sending the emerging agreement to the U.S. Congress for review.
Speaking on the sidelines of the Group of Seven summit in the French Alps, Trump said, “I like the idea, send it to Congress please.” He added, “I mean who wouldn’t approve it.”
Republicans on Capitol Hill say they want Trump to provide more information about the agreement, with some expressing skepticism that the deal can deter Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon.
Israel and the Lebanese government have entered into their own U.S.-mediated direct negotiations, of which Hezbollah was not a part. Those talks have yielded several announced ceasefires that were never implemented on the ground. Lebanese officials initially tried to keep Lebanon separate from the U.S.-Iran negotiations, not wanting to be seen as beholden to Iran, but they have since welcomed the announcement that the deal to end the U.S.-Iran war would include a ceasefire in Lebanon.
Araghchi’s latest comments appear to match the understanding of two regional officials with direct knowledge of the interim deal. The officials, speaking to AP on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door negotiations, said it would require Israel to leave nearly all the territory it occupies in Lebanon, minus a few hilltop points along the border seized earlier.
The officials say Iran insisted the accord include Lebanon in the last days of the negotiations.
Despite unanswered questions, US allies push to make deal work at G7 summit
Lebanon is only one of several major questions hanging over the ceasefire ahead of the planned ceremonial signing.
The agreement is meant to provide a meaningful truce in a monthslong war that has killed thousands across the Middle East, including the top leaders of Iran’s theocracy, and raised the prices of fuel, food and other basic goods far beyond the region.
The agreement provides for the “immediate” opening of the Strait of Hormuz and the lifting of the American naval blockade of Iranian ports, according to a senior U.S. official who spoke to reporters Monday on condition of anonymity to discuss outlines of the agreement.
Pakistani officials who helped broker the agreement also described plans for the simultaneous lifting of Iran’s closure of the strait and the U.S. blockade.
The United States and Iran will then begin 60 days of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program and the potential lifting of sanctions, Pakistani officials who helped broker the interim deal said, speaking on condition of anonymity about the unpublished text.
The pact also includes the possibility of releasing Iran’s frozen funds and a $300 billion fund to help rebuild Iran if Tehran meets certain benchmarks, senior U.S. officials told reporters Monday. Trump later said the United States would not “invest” funds in Iran.
Regarding the timeline, regional officials who spoke to AP about the deal said the release of frozen Iranian assets would be tied to Tehran implementing the deal. Gulf Arab states also have pledged to inject billions of dollars in Iran’s economy, they added, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the negotiations.
Iran’s nuclear program, specifically the fate of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, would be subject to the 60-day clock. Iran has agreed to discuss ways to possibly “dilute or remove” it, the officials said. However, it remains unclear whether Tehran would agree to that, particularly with hard-liners opposing to giving it up.
U.S. officials have not yet explained how they see the agreement addressing Iran’s nuclear program, including who will be in charge of verifying that Iran is in compliance and who will destroy or remove highly enriched uranium believed to be buried under nuclear sites that were badly damaged by U.S. strikes last summer.
Still, world leaders gathering in France for the first full day of the G7 summit insisted the agreement needed to succeed, even as key questions remained unanswered.
Some had clashed with Trump over not consulting them before going to war. But the leaders of France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom issued a joint statement congratulating the United States, the Iranian government and the mediators on what they called a “diplomatic breakthrough,” saying it was vital for the deal to be quickly implemented.
French President Emmanuel Macron said France and other Western nations were “ready to take action very quickly” to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz peacefully.
___ Metz reported from Ramallah, West Bank, and Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writers Julia Frankel in Jerusalem, Munir Ahmed in Islamabad, Michelle L. Price in Washington, Aamer Madhani in Geneva and Darlene Superville in Evian-les-Bains, France, contributed to this report.

The last time I had dinner with Armie Hammer, he drove us up Pacific Coast Highway in his black pickup truck and ordered mutton shank at a Greek spot in Malibu. That was November 2017, Call Me by Your Name was about to open and the world was his. He was 31, absurdly handsome, resistant of the label “movie star” — and bracing for something on the horizon.
“Given my history,” he told me that afternoon, referring to a string of box office disappointments, “I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
The shoe dropped. What followed was one of the most total and public collapses of a Hollywood career in recent history. The scandal consumed him so completely that for a stretch, he was living in a 200-square-foot hole of a flat in Venice Beach, paying for groceries with a debit card a friend had pressed into his hand. He went to the Cayman Islands. He built a farm. He carried a burner flip phone he bought at a gas station. He got no work for five years.
Now it’s a Tuesday night in June, nine years after that PCH drive, and we are on the bustling terrace of a discreet industry canteen in West Hollywood. Hammer arrives a few minutes late. He spots me, offers a quick wave, then changes course entirely to offer an enthusiastic greeting — big smiles, hearty hugs — to a man across the courtyard. Many heads turn his way.
After a minute or two, he makes his way over to me. He apologizes for the detour, explaining the man is another father at his daughter’s primary school.
“I called my publicist on the way here,” he says as I tactfully place a recorder on the corner of the table. “She asked if I was sure about this. I told her: ‘Do you think anything Seth can write is going to move the needle compared to what I’ve been through the last five years?’ “
He orders an Arnold Palmer and inspects the menu. He is clean-shaven, 39 years old and looks far from broken. In fact, he looks quite good — still trim, still tall (he’s 6- foot-5) and several degrees more rugged than the boy I met in 2017.
Yes, Armie Hammer is back. The question, however, is what “back” means for a man like this now.
***
Nine years ago, Hammer seemed to exist at the precise intersection of genetics, legacy and timing that occasionally produces a superstar. Great-grandson of the Russian-Jewish oil tycoon Armand Hammer, whose name still graces buildings across Los Angeles, he had grown up between Beverly Hills and the Cayman Islands, emerged from his teens with Polo-ad looks and old-school ease in front of cameras.
His breakthrough came playing both Winklevoss twins in David Fincher’s The Social Network. What followed — The Lone Ranger, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and finally Call Me by Your Name — was a career that kept almost arriving.
He was funny about it then. “I’ve heard the ‘This is your moment’ speech so many times,” I remember him saying with a sigh during our first encounter. “The way I look at it is, I’m building a collage of my work.” And enjoying himself as much as he could in the process.
“I used to call myself a consumer,” he tells me now. “Drinks, women, validation, experiences — I just wanted to consume. All of it. More, more, more.” He pauses. “I didn’t actually know how to give myself what I needed internally, so I relied on external sources. It’s like a black hole — no matter how much you throw in, it’s gone. You’re never going to fill up a black hole.”
There was also, underneath all that consumption, something more corrosive. “I had a bit of imposter syndrome,” he says. “I was like, ‘I don’t really belong here, but it seems like I’m here — so maybe I’ll have a martini, that’ll make me feel better about the fact that I’m here.’ “
Four years later, the collage he was building went up in flames. What happened is public record. Several women came forward with accounts of psychological and sexual abuse. Explicit messages attributed to Hammer had circulated online describing graphic sexual and cannibalistic fantasies. A woman with whom he carried on a four-year affair — all while married to ex-wife Elizabeth Chambers — accused him of rape. He denied the allegations. An LAPD investigation was opened and later closed without charges. For many, none of that settled anything. The messages alone were specific enough — and disturbing enough — that those who read them have not been able to unread them. The career, already faltering, ended entirely.
His WME agents dropped him; his publicist was gone. He is now represented by a single entertainment attorney whose primary job is contracts and who told Hammer, when asked to make some calls on his behalf, “That’s not really what I do.”
What followed was genuine chaos. Friends who texted their support privately were targeted by internet obsessives and doxed, he says. Hammer changed his phone number repeatedly until he gave up entirely and bought a burner flip phone at a gas station, carrying it for a year and a half.
For a stretch, he was couch surfing, staying in friends’ places while they traveled. He ended up in the Venice apartment — a rent-controlled space so small, it had a Murphy bed. The Hammer family fortune, such as it remains, was not a safety net. After his father died, he received nothing. “It’s just one of those things that’s so complicated, you have to be a tax attorney to fully understand it,” he says of the estate. “But the end result was not I’m set for the rest of my life, or even for the next couple of years. It hasn’t been that.”
I ask, carefully, about reports that his ex-wife played some role in what unfolded. He doesn’t take the bait, but he doesn’t entirely deflect it, either. “It doesn’t help my situation to make it worse for somebody else to try to save my own ass,” he says. “And all I’m doing is making something worse for someone who was for a long time the sole breadwinner of the family. If I disrupt that, it’s my kids who suffer.”
Hammer could write a handbook to surviving an epic cancellation: He got off social media. He read Pema Chödrön. He developed a philosophical framework for surviving the experience of having the entire internet decide it hates you. “There was a period where I was obsessively reading what people were saying,” he says. “And then it hit critical mass, and I thought: There is no nutritional value in this for me. This is almost not even the real world.” He cites a Tyler, the Creator tweet about cyberbullying, circa 2012, and pulls it up on his phone. (“Hahahahahahahaha How The Fuck Is Cyber Bullying Real,” the tweet begins.)
“I realized I could just focus on myself and my kids and staying healthy and growing as a person. You can make that your purpose,” he says.
What saved him, he says, was his father.
The family, including his wife — who had already filed for divorce — had retreated to the Cayman Islands when COVID hit. His father, Michael, held Caymanian citizenship, which gave them access to an island that for the first year of the pandemic had essentially zero cases. Schools stayed open. Restaurants stayed open. While Los Angeles descended into Zoom school and anxiety, his kids were outside, living something close to a normal childhood.
“It really was idyllic for the kids,” he says.
His relationship with his father had been complicated for years — two strong personalities, with accumulated grievances on both sides. When the scandal broke, Michael Hammer wanted to go to war with his son’s accusers. “He was furious,” Armie says. ” ‘I’m going to call this person, I’m going to do this, we have to make sure they know this.’ He really wanted to go on the offensive.
“I said: ‘Look, dude, I’m already on the cross,’ ” he continues. ” ‘The nails are in my hands. I’m not getting off this cross no matter what we do. And the more I struggle, the longer I’m going to be up here.’ “
He had come to believe, through whatever combination of self-help reading and desperation and time, that acceptance was the only viable strategy. “That which you resist persists. That which you accept transforms,” he says, reciting mantra. “There was nothing I could say that was going to fix anything for me.”
Then his father got sick, and the old grievances stopped mattering.
“He was still able to be a lifeline,” Hammer says. Michael owned a small apartment building on the island and gave his son a unit to stay in. But as Michael’s illness progressed, it was his son who became the lifeline: “I would bathe him and cook food for him and feed him and change his diapers and do all that stuff.” It transformed their relationship, just in time. “We got to have all those conversations,” he says. “We got to have an amends with each other. We got to really move through it. And then I got to be there holding his hand when he died. Which is like a gift.”
Still raw from his father’s death, he found himself one afternoon talking to a man he describes only as “an old Jamaican guy.” Hammer had been complaining that his industry friends were sending sympathetic texts but not publicly defending him. The Jamaican man looked at him.
“What kind of friend are you?” he said. He explained: Your house is burning down right now, in real time. You want your friends to run into a burning house? What happens to them if they do?
“They get burned,” Hammer said.
“Do you want your friends to get burned?”
“No.”
“So if you were really a good friend, what would you want your friends to do?”
Hammer thought about it. “I would want them to stay as far away from the fire as possible.”
The man patted his leg. “Now you’re thinking like a real friend.” Then he stood up and walked away.
“I think that was a spiritual moment,” Hammer says. “Joseph Campbell would have called it a mentor moment in my hero’s journey, whatever the fuck that is.”
***
He came back to Los Angeles in 2024, and about a year and a half later, an email arrived. It was from Uwe Boll — the German filmmaker whose decades of aggressively low-budget, critically dismissed genre films had transformed him into something of a cult figure, the kind of director whose name functions as its own punchline. Boll wanted Hammer for a movie. It was the first offer he had received in five years.
“I’m pretty sure I cried,” Hammer says. “It was just this moment where I was like: I’m going to get to do the thing that I love more than anything — other than my children.”
He pauses.
“I would have done a fucking cat food commercial. I just wanted to work again.”
But underneath was something more unsettling: He wasn’t sure he could remember how to act. “I was scared shitless until the moment Uwe said action for the first time,” he says. “And then I was like — ‘Wait. I do know how to do this.’ There’s a reason I had the success I had.”
The film, shot in Croatia, is called Citizen Vigilante. Boll’s methods are famously economical: The script was around 50 pages when Hammer received it. “I was like, ‘Where’s the rest?’ ” He adopts a thick German accent as Boll: ” ‘No, no, no! Ve just go and shoot and have fun. Ve vant you to be great!’ ” Hammer laughs at the memory. “I was like, ‘Well, OK?’ “
He has since done three more low-budget films: Frontier Crucible, a Western. Night Driver, a small L.A. thriller about a Mafia errand boy whose night goes sideways. And a film in Bulgaria, playing a real person whose identity he won’t disclose because the project hasn’t been announced. He grew a mustache for it that, paired with a trucker hat in a recent paparazzi photo, generated significant online enthusiasm. “Was I Daddy?” he jokingly inquires after I bring it up.
The professional apparatus is gone entirely. No agents, no manager, no personal publicist. If someone wants to hire Armie Hammer, they go on IMDb Pro and find his attorney. “Lately, they always say on the first day of set, ‘We can’t believe we actually got you to do this.’ ” He pauses. “And I’m like: ‘My schedule was pretty open.’ “
His life now is structured around the children — a daughter, 11, and a son, 9 — with an almost monastic discipline. He is up at 6:30 every morning. He makes his bed. He cleans his apartment. He makes coffee and takes it outside and meditates and does what he calls his “gratitude practice.” Then he walks to his ex-wife’s house, wakes the kids, makes their breakfast, gets them to school. He picks them up most afternoons. He drops them off in the evening.
He lives in a small, rented house in West Hollywood — a minor but welcome upgrade from the Venice shoebox. Returning to Los Angeles after the Caymans was harder than he expected. “I was back in a city that felt like it used to be my city,” he says, “but it had moved on without me.”
Throughout the evening, as he cuts into his medium rare steak frites, I keep waiting for the score-settling. It never comes. He won’t go after his ex-wife when given the opening. He won’t name the industry friends who went quiet — although he will note that his gay friends never turned on him. “They were like, ‘Bitch, you think you’re special? If the Grindr chats got released and someone hacked into those, no one would have a job.’ ” He laughs. “And, by the way,” he adds, referencing his own leaked texts, “if you’re sitting up in your room late at night high as shit just going, ‘This is fucking hilarious. I’m being funny now’ — you take that shit out of context, then you’re done.”
But he does not claim total innocence, either. “I made these problems for myself,” he says. “This didn’t happen to me by a fluke accident. I didn’t do what people are saying I did. But I brought very dangerous and unsafe people into my life, and I pissed off people in my life — and here we are.”
He describes the chaos of the scandal — the doxing, the phone numbers, the siege of it — without identifying a villain. But he acknowledges that his public image is a hurdle he has far from cleared, that he is not yet entirely un-canceled. “It’s like Sisyphus pushing the boulder,” he says, “except my boulder is covered in Vaseline.”
He went to see a movie recently — the hit horror breakout Obsession — and afterward found himself in a conversation about wishes. A friend asked what he would wish for if he could wish for anything. He thought about it seriously. A billion dollars, he decided. Put a chunk of it in an ETF, set the kids up, have some comfort and stability. His friend was surprised: Your wish wouldn’t be going back and undoing everything that’s happened?
“Honestly, no,” he tells me toward the end of our reunion dinner, after the apple tarte tatin à la mode arrives (his suggestion). “I remember the emotional state and the mental state I was in before all that happened. Healthy people don’t act the way I was acting.” He glances down at the table. “I would have loved if I could have had an opportunity to do it in a little bit more of a gentle way,” he says of his struggles since we last sat down together. “But at the end of the day — you get what you get.”

El Niño has arrived and it could become one of the largest on record, and California may be in for a bumpy ride.
While the climate pattern is often linked with a higher chance of more rain in Southern California, it can affect the state — and its famous coastline — in numerous ways. That’s especially possible during a strong El Niño event, as this one is shaping up to be.
In fact, there’s a 63% chance El Niño could be “very strong” toward the end of the year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center. And there’s an 88% chance El Niño will be either “very strong” or “strong.”
“The recently observed and ongoing rapid escalation of conditions in the tropical Pacific, plus the consistently and increasingly extreme forward-looking model projections, truly do suggest that something extraordinary could unfold,” Daniel Swain, a UC climate scientist, wrote in a blog post.
“The upcoming El Niño event — which has a high likelihood of becoming very strong or even historic in magnitude — will likely lead to widespread and significant global impacts,” he added. “It is possible, even probable, that at least some of these effects will be unprecedented in the modern era, given the combined effects of a high-end El Niño event plus over a century of accumulated global warming.”
El Niño’s impacts are usually felt strongest during the winter. Here are five major ways California could be affected.
1. Wet and wild winter
While it’s no given, El Niño could open up the atmospheric floodgates in Southern California.
Of the last four “very strong” El Niños on record, two — 1982-83 and 1997-98 — brought coastal Southern California more than double its typical annual rainfall. Another, in 1991-92, brought 133% of the average, according to data provided by Jan Null, adjunct professor at San José State University. But the last one — in 2015-16 — did not meet expectations, with just 77% of the annual average rainfall in the Southland.
According to NOAA, stormier weather is generally more likely in the southern United States during an El Niño. The Pacific Northwest, on the other hand, generally gets drier winters.
“A very strong El Niño event might well be the single most important predictor of substantially increased odds of unusually wet conditions, and increased likelihood of individual heavy precipitation events, in any given winter in California — and perhaps also an early warning indicator of increased risk of large-scale flood events,” Swain wrote.
Despite the threat of floods, a wet winter could bring some relief to the Colorado River basin, which is in an “exceptionally severe multi-decadal drought,” Swain wrote.
2. High-tide flooding
More high-tide flooding is possible in an El Niño.
“Elevated sea levels along the West Coast of the U.S. can occur, causing high tides and strong surf to ride higher and push much further inland than normal,” NOAA said in a statement.
Agency experts noted that the El Niños of 2015-16 and 2023-24 brought more frequent, deeper and widespread high-tide flooding, a risk made worse after decades of sea level rise.
The El Niño of 2015-16 brought “record coastal erosion along many California beaches,” according to the California Coastal Commission.
“Major El Niño events can raise local sea level by around six to 10 inches in California during the winter rainy and stormy season through a combination of northward-propagating coastally-trapped Kelvin waves and thermal expansion of seawater,” Swain wrote. “Significant coastal flooding is possible later this year.”
3. Warmer waters and temperatures
One of the ingredients of El Niño is triggered when the trade winds in the Pacific Ocean — winds that reliably blow from east to west — weaken. That allows the sea level to rise a little bit, “and it creates what we call a downwelling oceanic Kelvin wave,” said Jon Gottschalck, the Climate Prediction Center’s operational prediction branch chief.
That’s not an ocean wave at the surface but one that moves warmer water at the surface deeper down. And the wave “will bring warm water from the western Pacific to the central and eastern Pacific,” Gottschalck said.
The next ingredient to an El Niño is seeing how the movement of warmer water eastward changes wind patterns.
Warmer water moving from west to east also decreases the west-to-east winds, which then allows even more warmer western water to move toward the eastern Pacific. “It’s kind of a positive feedback. And so once that occurred, the El Niño event will basically develop and intensify,” Gottschalck said.
The El Niño-triggered warming of water off the coast of Mexico, Central America and northern South America then typically moves the atmospheric jet stream southward to the southern United States, “which can bring wetter-than-normal conditions to our area” in the winter, said Ariel Cohen, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Oxnard.
El Niño will probably contribute to more record-breaking global temperatures, Swain wrote.
4. Sharks and other sea creatures
The warmer waters could attract additional seafaring tourists toward California’s shores.
“In the near future, we may expect to see an increase in tropical or warm subtropical species, which may include increased shark sightings off of the Southern California coast,” said Nate Jaros, the Aquarium of the Pacific’s vice president of animal care for fish and invertebrates. “In very rare cases, even whale sharks have visited off Catalina, including in the 2015-2016 El Niño events.”
Marine mammals and other migratory species may also move closer to shore, “because they’re going to where their food is,” said Andrew Leising, a research oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center.
El Niño has in the past been associated with larger sablefish found closer to shore, and a higher larval abundance of rockfish.
Warmer ocean temperatures can also increase the presence of sea jellies and other gelatinous creatures, Jaros said.
A jellyfish-like creature called Velella velella, also known as by-the-wind sailors, can wash up on West Coast shores and are usually harmless to people. However, “in past El Niño events, we’ve seen similar-looking Portuguese man o’ war, a very rare visitor to our waters, washing up on our beaches. These animals can have a very painful sting,” Jaros said.
In a previous marine heat wave called “The Blob,” which was followed by a very strong El Niño, scientists observed increased tuna come closer to shore, go farther north, “and come in earlier than they do in other years, and so that actually leads to increases in fishing opportunity for those highly migratory and large game fish species,” Leising said.
5. But other sea life could struggle
While not solely the work of El Niño, warmer oceanic waters can wreak havoc on ocean life.
There are currently two marine heat waves unrelated to El Niño near California — one just off the state’s southern coast that started in December, and another farther west off the coast of Northern California and Oregon that started in May, according to data shared by Leising.
El Niño also tends to cause marine heat waves, Leising said.
“One of the most important things, though, for the animals in the ecosystem is not necessarily just how hot it is — that is important in some cases — but just how long they’re exposed to the heat,” Leising said. “We have a situation, particularly in Southern California, where we’ve already had this marine heat wave, and we’re just gonna kind of roll on into a heat wave that’s been brought about by El Niño.”
Past marine heat waves have decimated California’s kelp, “with bull kelp habitats declining 90% in Northern California since 2014,” Jaros said.
“The effects of this decline trickle down to other species, including endangered white abalone. And warmer waters can exacerbate the effects of sea star wasting disease, especially on the sunflower sea star, a population that’s nearly been wiped out of California,” he said.
In past strong El Niños, scientists have observed decreased plankton — an important food source for marine animals — and an increased probability of harmful algal blooms.
Previous strong El Niños have also brought a lower abundance, and a more northward shift, of market squid, Leising said.
“We often have seen in the past with El Niños reduced productivity of California sea lions, and the pups are often smaller,” Leising said.
A previous combination of “The Blob” — which hit the West Coast more than a decade ago — followed by a very strong El Niño resulted in “several closures of crab and shellfish fisheries due to harmful algal blooms,” according to Leising.
“We had increased whale entanglements because the whales, again, are closer to shore, they’re coming into contact with more ships and more fishing gear,” Leising said. “And we also had a loss of some of the habitat for groundfish because the oxygen at the bottom, where they live, was lower.”
There were also die-offs of seals, sea lions and marine birds, Leising said, probably from a combination of a lack of food and harmful algal blooms, and less food out there for baleen whales.