Washington, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser was slapped with an ethics complaint filed Tuesday by a watchdog group accusing her of potentially accepting illegal travel and hospitality gifts on at least three long-haul jaunts — including to Qatar, the Masters golf tournament, and President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT)
filed the complaint with the DC Board of Ethics and Government Accountability
after a local TV station revealed in April that Doha had paid at least $61,930 for the Democrat and four staffers to travel to the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference in neighboring Dubai.
According to the report by WJLA-TV, Bowser’s office initially stated the DC Chamber of Commerce paid for the Qatar trip, which it denied. The mayor’s office then claimed the travel was paid for by the US Conference of Mayors.
In February of this year, the complaint states, Bowser’s office asked the Qataris for a complete breakdown of the trip’s expenses, which Doha described as an “in-kind donation.”
DC law requires a donation agreement with Qatar, but there is no record of such an understanding. In response to queries by WJLA, Bowser’s office claimed it was undertaking proper record-keeping by asking Doha for an itemized record — so an agreement could be drawn up two years after the fact.
The FACT complaint, first
reported by Fox News, charges that Bowser has kept DC taxpayers in the dark about other trips to destinations as varied as Las Vegas, Miami and Augusta, Ga., where the Masters is held.
“It is not simply the Qatar trip, but a troubling pattern from Mar-a-Lago to Doha to Augusta National — the District has no record of who paid for these trips or what public purpose they served, if there was one at all,” Kendra Arnold, executive director of FACT, said in a statement.
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