Кандидат в конгресс Эллисман обвинила Тенни в сокрытии факта оплаты поездки на ЧМ в Катаре правительством страны

Democratic Congressional candidate Alissa Ellman is criticizing her opponent, Rep. Claudia Tenney, for failing to disclose that the government of Qatar paid for Tenney to see the World Cup in 2022. Tenney, R-Cleveland, represents New York’s vast 24th Congressional district, which includes all or parts of 14 counties, including Genesee, Livingston, Orleans and Wyoming counties, and stretches 200 miles from Niagara to Jefferson counties. She joined a bipartisan delegation to the sporting event in November 2022, along with Reps. André Carson, D-Ind., Lou Correa, D-Calif, Darin LaHood, R-Ill., Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Bryan Steil, R-Wis., Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., and David Valadao, R-Calif. The trip was fully paid for by the government of Qatar, but Tenney didn’t disclose the funding. In disclosures, Tenney declared the source only as “Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act (MECEA) Trip” — the law allowing members of Congress to take foreign government-funded trips — while LaHood declared it only as “MECEA.” Aside from Tenney and LaHood, all other lawmakers on the trip named Qatar specifically. The House Committee on Ethics, which oversees financial disclosures, explicitly instructs members filling out financial disclosure forms to identify the trip sponsor. “Provide the name of the sponsor or organization that actually paid for or provided the travel (e.g., ‘XYZ Trade Association’ or ‘International Visitors Board’),” the committee’s instructions read. “There may be more than one sponsor for a particular trip. For MECEA trips, the sponsoring entity is the government of the host country, or an agency or the department thereof. You may wish to indicate parenthetically the type of trip.” Other members of Congress disclosed the funding source as “Qatar,” “Government of Qatar,” “Embassy of Qatar,” “State of Qatar (MECEA),” “The Qatari-U.S. Educational and Cultural Exchange Program,” and “Embassy of the State of Qatar (MECEA).” For other paid trips, Tenney has disclosed the sponsor. During her time in Congress, she has declared 15 paid or reimbursed trips. Of those, only two were MECEA trips: the World Cup trip, and a trip to Saudi Arabia in early 2023. For the Saudi Arabia trip, Tenney declared the funding source as “Saudi Arabia MECEA, US Congressional Education Exchange.” Tenney also publicly discussed a prior Qatar trip, which she took a year earlier as part of a Republican delegation. That trip was funded by the private U.S.-Qatar Business Council, not the government of Qatar. Following that trip, Tenney made two blog posts about the trip, and in financial disclosures, she disclosed USQBC as the sponsor. Tenney did not make any posts to her blog or social-media pages about the World Cup trip. Ellman, of Lockport, said Tenney’s MECEA disclosure follows a broader pattern of secrecy about travel. In an opposition research document, her campaign cited a Politico article published in January that suggested Tenney used campaign funds to see Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic play in New York City and Miami. The Daily News sent Tenney’s office a list of questions asking what Tenney did and with whom she met on the Qatar trip, why her disclosure didn’t name Qatar as the payor and how the trip influenced her approach to U.S.–Qatar relations. Tenney spokesperson Ashlie Walker did not answer any of the questions, instead criticizing The Daily News for reporting on the topic at all. “Congresswoman Tenney’s bipartisan delegation trip was publicly disclosed nearly three years ago and was taken as part of her work on the House Foreign Affairs Committee,” Walker wrote in an email. “If your outlet has to dig back several years, repackage public information, and portray routine congressional business as something nefarious, perhaps it should spend a little more time on issues New Yorkers actually care about.” A subsequent call to Walker seeking more detailed information was not returned. Asked on Tuesday whether the World Cup trip is old news, Ellman said it — and a separate trip to Scotland that Tenney took this spring, paid for by the Republican Main Street Partnership super PAC and by Tenney’s campaign — are part of a pattern of Tenney favoring “fun experiences” over constituents’ needs. “Does it matter if it was four years ago? Was she a sitting congressperson?” Ellman said. “Four years ago, I think the economic problems were still here in NY-24. There are the same issues, and you would think, after four years, perhaps she would have considered actually spending time here outside of campaign season and speaking with people who aren’t three or four people in a room that you’ve planned a month ahead of time.” She said that if elected, she would never accept such a trip. “If you’re talking about fraud, waste or abuse, I’m going to want to spend the money that I make in Congress here in NY-24, helping people here, staying in hotels here, spending my money at restaurants here. That’s what makes the most sense to me,” she said. “I just find it to be rather despicable to not show up for your constituents, but you’re very willing to travel to foreign countries — foreign countries that you talk smack about publicly, like Canada. I just think that we can have better priorities as people who are supposedly in this for public service.” Ellman’s campaign pointed to conservative outlets’ coverage of the trip, which lambasted Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn, for her attendance. The New York Post covered the trip with the headline, “Ilhan Omar’s World Cup trip paid for by Hamas-funding Qatar,” while The Washington Examiner reported the trip with the headline, “Squad Democrat Ilhan Omar’s World Cup trip funded by Hamas-tied Qatar.” Tenney has since criticized Qatar for hosting leaders of Hamas and called for their expulsion from the country, though she does not appear to have criticized Qatar before her trips to the country.