Little Disclosure Was Required For Schock’s Brazil Trip
- FACTDC
- Jun 20, 2015
- 2 min read
The Chicago Sun-Times reported this week on new details that emerged about disgraced former Rep. Aaron Schock’s (R-IL) 2014 trip to Brazil as a member of Congress:
In May 2014, then-Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Ill., organized an eight-day trip to Brazil — paid for by Brazil’s government — where he conducted official business, and tacked on a visit to a beach resort with Rep. Jason Smith. R- Mo., and three staffers, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned.
A grand jury in Springfield is investigating how Schock spent taxpayer and government money as well as other travel and business dealings. The criminal investigation is moving forward even though Schock resigned from Congress on March 31.
Details of Schock’s Brazil trip, just one of many international swings he took while in Congress, are just now surfacing because the latest congressional personal financial reports covering 2014 were made public on Friday.
Full details on the trip were provided by one of the members of Congress who accompanied Schock to Brazil:
Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., one of four lawmakers on the Brazil trip, provided a full agenda of the visit to the Sun-Times and discussed it in an interview. Kelly has been granted an extension to file her 2014 financial disclosure.
The trip was officially considered a “cultural exchange”:
Kelly said Tuesday that Schock invited her on the trip in April 2014. It’s not known how Schock got the authority to recruit Kelly for the trip, which was officially considered a “cultural exchange.”
The Brazilian government paid for the trip but, unlike if the trip had been privately funded, Schock’s Brazilian junket was “not subject to extensive disclosure”:
Lawmakers are allowed to accept trips paid for by foreign governments if the sponsoring nation is part of the State Department’s Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act. That act allows other nations to pay for lawmaker cultural exchanges if, according to the House Ethics Manual, they are “visits and interchanges between the United States and other countries of leaders, experts in fields of specialized knowledge or skill, and other influential or distinguished persons.”
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Unlike other privately paid trips for lawmakers, travel under the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act is not subject to extensive disclosure.
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