Former Congressional Ethics Chair: My $16,000 African Safari Was to Research Al Qaeda

Rep. Jo Bonner responds to MoJo’s investigation of the trip he and two other GOPers took to Kenya in 2012.

Rep. Jo Bonner Pete Marovich/ZUMApress.com

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Rep. Jo Bonner (R-Ala.), the former chairman of the House ethics committee, has responded to questions Mother Jones first raised about the all-expenses paid trip to a Kenyan estate that he, two other GOP lawmakers, and members of their families took in August 2012, claiming that he was visiting the site where the Oscar-winning film Out of Africa was shot in order to learn about supposed connections between poaching and Al Qaeda.

As Mother Jones noted in a recent investigation, the estate the lawmakers visited is owned by the trust of a secretive French American family under investigation by French authorities for tax evasion and other misdeeds. The trip was organized by the International Conservation Caucus Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofit that is backed by polluting companies as well as four of the world’s largest environmental groups and spends much of its budget sending members of Congress on trips. The group was founded by a former lobbyist for African dictators who met with the lawmakers abroad.

New House rules Bonner signed off on in December 2012 sought to limit privately sponsored travel to nonprofits “with legitimate interests in providing appropriate fact finding opportunities to Members of Congress.” But when I asked Bonner what made the weeklong, $16,214.66 Kenyan excursion he and his wife enjoyed appropriate, he didn’t respond—until Wednesday. (The story hit newsstands in January and first appeared online on Tuesday.)

“It is disappointing, but not surprising, that Mother Jones’ [sic] mischaracterized what was an approved conservation fact-finding trip to Africa,” Bonner told the Alabama Media Group newspaper chain. “My participation was fully vetted by the non-partisan committee staff who determined that the trip was in full compliance with all House rules. The trip was privately funded by the International Conservation Caucus Foundation with no taxpayer dollars used at all.”

Bonner claimed that “the article implies I led the delegation.” It did not, although the congressman may have gotten that false impression if he didn’t read past the headline on the print version of the story (“The Bonner Party”).

His other points, however, are mostly true. And that’s precisely the difficulty, according to Public Citizen lobbyist Craig Holman. “Sadly to say, [the trip] does comply with the loophole-ridden ethics rules that [Bonner’s] committee has developed,” he said. “The problem is, it does not comply with what was originally intended” with the post-Jack Abramoff scandal lobbying reforms, Holman added.

“It was clearly intended that any lobbying entity that has business pending before Congress does not sponsor travel junkets,” explained Holman, who helped craft the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007. That’s certainly the case with ICCF funders like ExxonMobil, whose oil profits would be hit hard by the carbon-pricing bills Democratic lawmakers have recently introduced, or the Nature Conservancy, which depends on million-dollar EPA grants like this to fund its annual budget of nearly a billion dollars.

The reason those rules don’t apply to groups like the ICCF, which is funded by lobbyists and organizations that hire lobbyists, is because “Bonner’s ethics committee has decided those regulations won’t apply to nonprofits,” Holman said. “With that devastating blow, they have essentially crippled the travel restrictions.”

The fact that taxpayer dollars weren’t used is beside the point. “The problem is that lobbyist and special-interest money is being used to pay for the trip. It’s being financed by groups and people who want something in return from Bonner,” Holman said.

The Alabama congressman added that “one of the primary areas of focus during the visit” to a private ranch—featuring a golf course, racetrack, dozens of man-made lakes, around 120 miles of road, more than 200 major buildings, and some 350 employees—was “to investigate to what extent poaching is used by terror organizations, including Al Qaeda, to fund their operations.”

That’s fine and well, according to Holman. But “if it is significant for members of Congress to travel to some area to see what’s going on, then those types of trips can be financed by the government.” That would eliminate any real or perceived appearance of “that sort of conflict of interest,” he said.

At least one of Bonner’s constituents seems to agree with Holman’s assessment. In the Alabama Media Group story, a commenter under the name Blake Kirk noted that, “when somebody just GIVES a Congresscritter something that you or I would have to pay tens of thousands of dollars for, I have to wonder what they are getting back in return.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate