Chicago Mayor Under Fire for Trove of Luxury Gifts Found Stashed in a City Hall Office

The mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, is facing accusations he received luxury gifts without properly reporting them and then blocked the city’s inspector general from entering the room where they were stored.Chicago’s inspector general, Deborah Witzburg, has released a report accusing the mayor’s office of hiding information about gifts that should have otherwise been publicly reported. The report notes that city officials may “accept gifts ‘given to’ or ‘accepted on behalf of the City’” as long as they are “promptly” reported to the Board of Ethics and the city comptroller, “who is to add such gifts to an inventory of the City’s property.” However, since the 1980s, there has been an “unwritten agreement” that did not require the mayor to inform ethics officials. Instead, ethics officials have been “advised that such gifts could be recorded in a publicly available logbook.”The inspector general’s office decided to pay a visit to the fifth floor of City Hall, where the logbook is stored, in an “undercover capacity,” and asked to view the book, only to be rejected by city officials and told to file a Freedom of Information Act request.“Again, in a covert capacity, without identifying itself as the source of the request, OIG submitted a FOIA request for the log,” Ms. Witzburg’s report said. “The Mayor’s Office did not timely respond, constituting a denial of the request. OIG subsequently sent an official document request for the log, and only then was it produced.”Some of the items listed in the logbook, according to the inspector general, included high-end alcohol, Hugo Boss cufflinks, Kate Spade handbags, a Gucci tote bag, a “personalized Mont Blanc pen,” and a 2023 U.S. National Soccer Team Jersey. The gifts were listed as being stored in a “Gift Room.” However, when the officials with the inspector general’s office tried to visit the storage area, they were rejected “apparently on the advice of the City’s Department of Law.” The inspector general report noted Chicago’s municipal code “makes it the duty of every elected or appointed officer, employee, department, and agency of the City to cooperate in OIG inquiries.“OIG recommended that the Mayor’s Office comply with the generally applicable public reporting requirements for gifts accepted on behalf of the City, and make the Mayor’s ‘Gift Room’ available for inspection,” the report stated. In response to the report, Mr. Brandon’s office said it would make the “gift room” available to the inspector general’s office with a “properly scheduled appointment.” Still, it did not “acknowledge that DOL, apparently acting on its behalf, persisted in denying OIG access to the Gift Room and does not explain why it would not have been ‘practicable’ to provide OIG immediate access to the Gift Room.”The report also stated that “almost 70 percent of gifts received do not list the identity of the gift giver.”Mr. Brandon’s office did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment by the time of publication.However, speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Mr. Johnson called the report a “mischaracterization.” He also defended how his staff responded to requests to access the “gift room,” saying there is a “process that everybody has to go through. Nobody is above the law.”He also insisted there is no room “full of belts and socks and shoes and fancy hats.”“If people want a tour of this room, I’ll sign up, because I’ve never been to it myself,” he quipped. A conservative radio host, Andrew Wilkow, shared a report about Mr. Johnson’s gifts and said on X, “This is how communists operate.” Another conservative commentator, Mark Weyemuller, suggested the mayor should resign for “violation of his oath of office.” Mr. Johnson took office in 2023 and has repeatedly come under fire and been labeled America’s “most hated mayor” for his policies, such as proposing $300 million in new property tax increases to help pay for an influx of migrants to the city and rejecting the city council’s plan to keep the gunshot detection system ShotSpotter. In June 2024, he blamed the city’s problems, such as crime, on his predecessors, complaining that they ran the city “into the ground” and left him to deal with the “chaos and the mess that was created with other people.”

Chicago Mayor Under Fire for Trove of Luxury Gifts Found Stashed in a City Hall Office

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