<\/p>\n
Mayor is mum on trip to Paris<\/p>\n
Filner says only that the trip was to get San Diego jobs<\/p>\n
San Diego Mayor Bob Filner just returned from Paris but declined on Thursday to answer questions about the travel or who paid for it.<\/p>\n
Filner briefly told reporters at a news conference that the trip was not a “junket,” but a “business trip which is to get jobs to San Diego.”<\/p>\n
He deferred further questions until a news conference he said he would hold Friday. U-T Watchdog has submitted public records requests for documents related to the trip, including the cost of travel for Filner’s city security detail.<\/p>\n
A news release from the National Council of Resistance of Iran said Filner attended a group rally in Villepinte, France, near Paris.<\/p>\n
“My first question is who is paying for all this?” Councilman Scott Sherman said. “I don’t get why a mayor of the city of San Diego would need to be there. I think he was beating feet as quick as he could to get out of town because of all the negative news media.”<\/p>\n
Filner left town late last week amid several controversies, including his use of a bodyguard to remove a City Attorney’s Office representative from a council meeting last week.<\/p>\n
Filner was also facing questions over a donation to the city from developer Sunroad Centrum Partners. Filner vetoed the builder’s request to modify a Kearny Mesa development plan and then later dropped his objection after the company gave $100,000 to the city for a veterans plaza and a bicycling event — pet projects of Filner.<\/p>\n
Filner has previously accepted travel from groups that are part of the National Council of Resistance of Iran. He went to Paris in June 2011, as a member of Congress. He also took a similar trip in June of 2007, federal records show.<\/p>\n
His 2011 trip cost $6,589 and was paid for by Colorado’s Iranian American Community, a group tied to the Mujahideen-e Khalq or MEK, the militant — and largest — arm of the National Council of Resistance of Iran.<\/p>\n
That trip included a first class flight and a stay at a Marriott. Legistorm, a nonpartisan Washington DC-based organization that compiles information about Congress, including Congressional travel, noted, “This trip included unusually expensive hotel charges.”<\/p>\n
The 2007 trip to France, also paid for by Colorado’s Iranian American Community, cost $7,949. The plane ticket in that case was business class.<\/p>\n
During the mayoral campaign last year, Filner was criticized for accepting 16 free trips as a congressman, totaling $40,000. U-T Watchdog determined his travel was at the median for the county’s congressional delegation, that is, third highest out of five legislators.<\/p>\n
He said at the time, “I plead guilty to doing my job as a congressman, informing myself about world issues, building relationships with world leaders and fighting for human rights.”<\/p>\n
Filner is not alone in accepting travel from the Iranian groups. Others who have gone include former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Rep. Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island.<\/p>\n
In large part, the trips were part of a lobbying campaign to remove the MEK from the U.S. State Department’s foreign terrorist organizations list. In a speech to the group, Filner compared their plight to the U.S. civil rights movement.<\/p>\n
“This will happen,” Filner said in a speech to the group in 2011. “This will happen. The laws, the facts, are on our side.”<\/p>\n
The de-listing effort succeeded last year.<\/p>\n
U-T San Diego , By Trent Seibert<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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