Politics
Mayor Brandon Johnson Blocked Attempts to Search for Gifts He Accepted Without Reporting Them as Required: Inspector General
A shelf in the mayor's gift room that includes a pair of Hugo Boss cuff links accepted by Mayor Brandon Johnson's office on behalf of the city of Chicago. (Heather Cherone/WTTW News)
Mayor Brandon Johnson twice blocked the city’s watchdog from searching for gifts he accepted on behalf of the city without reporting them, as mandated by the city’s ethics ordinance, Inspector General Deborah Witzburg said Tuesday.
In addition, Johnson’s staff did not turn a small City Hall room into a storage room for the gifts he accepted on behalf of the city until February, after Witzburg first revealed he had quietly accepted “cufflinks, designer handbags, and men’s shoes” and failed to document those gifts, according to Witzburg’s report.
“The mayor’s office has taken the position here that it must open those doors to oversight only when it suits them to do so, and that position does little to chip away at mistrust or to pay down the deficit of legitimacy,” Witzburg said in a statement.
A spokesperson for Johnson said he acted “promptly to modernize long-standing practices by establishing a larger, dedicated space for public access” after the inspector general’s initial report and began publishing an online log of all of the gifts accepted by the mayor.
In addition, members of the public can sign up for a 15-minute slot to inspect the gift room once every three months. Just two Chicagoans have done so, said spokesperson Cassio Mendoza.
“I think there are much more important issues in the City of Chicago that the (Office of the Inspector General) and the press could be focused on,” Mendoza said. “I would just note that the ‘designer handbags’ language in her release is disingenuous at best and racist at worst, given that the bag is an obvious, cheap knock off. As you know, the vast majority of the items in the gift room are T-shirts and hats... but the insinuation is that there are a bunch of luxury goods hidden away.”
The city’s Ethics Ordinance requires “[e]ach department’s premises, equipment, personnel, books, records, and papers shall be made available as soon as practicable to the inspector general.”
The mayor’s office has disputed that city law entitles the inspector general to make unannounced inspections of the mayor’s offices.
When an undercover investigator working for Witzburg asked in June 2024 to see the list of the gifts to Johnson on a required official document, they were turned away, in violation of city law, according to Witzburg’s first report on the gifts accepted by the mayor.
In November 2024, staff in the mayor’s office refused to allow representatives of the inspector general’s office to inspect the room at City Hall where gifts accepted by the mayor on behalf of the city are required to be stored, according to Witzburg’s first report.
After that report triggered a political firestorm, the public’s first glimpse into the so-called gift room was a 21-second video, posted to the mayor’s YouTube page, slowly pans around a small room stuffed with artwork, coffee mugs, shoes, baseball caps, T-shirts, awards, plaques and books on shelves lining three walls.
That room, located on the third floor of City Hall, which is mostly used for storage and non-public offices, at the end of a dark hallway, was not transformed into the City Hall gift room until shortly before that video was posted.
When that video did not quell the outrage, news organizations were granted access to that room, which contained at least some of the gifts at the center of the controversy, including Hugo Boss cufflinks, Kate Spade and Gucci purses, a Google Pixel Watch and Apple AirPods.
Video: A video released by Mayor Brandon Johnson’s office on Feb. 12, 2025, of a small City Hall room crammed with gifts his office accepted on behalf of the city raises “more questions than answers,” Inspector General Deborah Witzburg said.
The “second thwarted unannounced inspection attempt occurred in July 2025” when inspectors “attempted to inspect a city office to search for items which OIG believed were being stored there in violation of city policy,” according to Witzburg’s report.
The occupant of that office, who was not identified, was directed by lawyers who report to Corporation Counsel Mary Richardson-Lowry not to allow the inspection, according to Witzburg’s report.
Several weeks later, an inspection with attorneys for the city present “confirmed the presence of those items in the office, underscoring the necessity and appropriateness of the inspection,” according to Witzburg’s report. “However, obstruction of (Office of the Inspector General’s) attempt to conduct an unannounced inspection precluded the immediate gathering of complete and reliable evidence of then-current conditions bearing directly upon the alleged violation of city policy.”
The city’s Ethics Ordinance “does not mean with advance notice to a city department occupying city premises, with advance notice to (the Department of Law), or only with a (Department of Law) attorney present; (Office of the Inspector General’s) authority to access city premises is plainly not made contingent on any of those conditions—or, in fact, to any conditions other than practicability,” according to Witzburg’s report.
In both attempted investigations, the inspector general “sought to conduct the search during business hours and while persons who would normally have access to the area to be inspected were present.”
Witzburg “recommended that the mayor take appropriate steps to ensure that city premises are made available to (the Office of the Inspector General) as required by law and to ensure the transparency and accountability of city government, including without limitation issuing guidance to city departments to clarify (the Office of the Inspector General’s) legal authority to access city premises.”
The mayor’s office “apparently” declined to implement that recommendation, and told Witzburg the “relocating of the Gift Room was not a covert undertaking but rather was done in full transparency.”
Representatives of the mayor did not tell the news media that the gift room had been set up after Witzburg’s first report.
WTTW News filed a lawsuit in the Cook County Circuit Court to obtain all communication related to gifts accepted on behalf of the city from Jan. 1, 2020, to the present. The next hearing is set for January.
Under an “unwritten agreement” between the Chicago Board of Ethics and the mayor’s office that began in the late 1980s, gifts accepted by the mayor were supposed to be logged in a book that would be available for public viewing on the fifth floor of City Hall, home to the mayor’s suite of offices, where the gifts were to be stored.
After Witzburg’s first report, the Chicago Board of Ethics revoked that “informal agreement.”
The city’s ethics ordinance prohibits elected officials and city employees from accepting most gifts worth more than $50.
Johnson accepted more than 120 gifts since the start of the year, with only a handful of the donors identified as required, according to the log published by the mayor’s office.
The most recent gift Johnson accepted on behalf of the city? A “red ‘Trump 2028’ hat,” from an unidentified person, according to the log.
