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OAN Staff Blake Wolf
5:56 PM – Tuesday, June 3, 2025
Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser recently received an ethics complaint from a watchdog organization. The group has accused her of potentially illegally accepting gifts from Qatar.
The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT) filed the complaint against Bowser, requesting the Board of Ethics and Government Accountability to investigate numerous trips that the D.C. mayor attended, which were allegedly paid for by a foreign government.
The complaint follows after it was revealed in April that the Qatari government paid at least “$61,930 for Bowser and four of her staffers” to travel to the 2023 United Nations (UN) Climate Change Conference in Dubai.
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The complaint also raises concerns about trips to Las Vegas, Nevada; Miami, Florida; and Augusta, Georgia—questioning both the purpose of these visits and the origin of the funds used to finance them.
“The basic standard for elected officials is honest transparency, which means following all disclosure laws and willingly answering the public’s questions. The mayor’s unwillingness to provide basic information about numerous high-profile trips is unacceptable,” stated Kendra Arnold, the executive director of FACT.
“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,” Arnold continued. “The ethics rules exist to protect against corruption, and when they are ignored, the public’s trust erodes. I urge the Board to investigate and enforce the law without delay.”
Initially, Bowser’s office reportedly claimed that the D.C. Chamber of Commerce paid for the trip to Qatar, which it later denied. However, Bowser’s office then came out with a statement soon after claiming that the trip was actually paid for by the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
“When questioned by the press, initially the mayor’s office said the trip was paid for by the D.C. Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber said that was not true. Then, the mayor’s office said the trip was paid for by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. That was also false,” the FACT complaint stated.
“Yet, unbelievably, it wasn’t until a reporter’s Freedom of Information Act request in March 2025 that this information was publicly revealed–more specifically that Qatar paid more than $61,930 for the trip the mayor’s office was not attempting to retroactively describe as an ‘in-kind donation.’ As of May 2025, the District still does not have a record of Qatar paying for Bowser’s 2023 trip,” it continued.
The complaint went on to argue that Bowser’s trip to Qatar “clearly” qualifies as a gift, “and one that elected officials are personally prohibited from accepting.”
“Additionally, this gift would not qualify as a donation made to the District because the donation was not recorded and approved before the donation was used. The District still does not even have a record of it,” it added. “The mayor and Qatar’s retroactive description of the gift as an ‘in-kind donation’ should not carry any weight–both because this is a self-serving claim that was not made until years after the trip and because it does not meet the legal requirements to be categorized as one.”
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