Givenchy bag, signed sports memorabilia among items found inside mayor's gift room at City Hall
It's not uncommon for Chicago's mayor to receive gifts, but when the Chicago Office of Inspector General wanted access to the mayor's gift room to see the items, they were repeatedly denied.
On Monday, the doors to the room were opened for CBS News Chicago. So, what was inside?
Hundreds of items, some lavish, some ordinary.
The big question remains: Who is giving these gifts, and are they getting anything back from City Hall in exchange?
Despite the tour and revamped policies, most gifts continue to be received without a note on who gave them.
Deep inside the little-used third floor of City Hall.
"We have the shoes, the Kate Spade purse," said Lori Lipson, deputy mayor of infrastructure and services.
The tour begins in an unremarkable room about the size of a one-car garage with low-hanging pipes.
"Every mayor has had a gift room. It's just not been exciting until now," Lipson said. "It includes hats, t-shirts, there's some memorabilia you'll see from NASCAR, and awards.
There are also pricier items that all appear unused, including a Givenchy bag, signed sports memorabilia, and a Montblanc pen.
When asked if any of the items were used by the mayor, Lipson said "no."
The Inspector General report revealed that 70% of gifts to Mayor Johnson failed to include who gave them—leading the mayor to call for better record keeping, including who gave the gift, when possible.
After checking the now public report, the vast majority of items still lack details about who gave the gift, including a crystal necklace the week of Valentine's Day.
Why is that still happening?
"Most of the time, they're given at a parade or school; it's not a particular person. Sometimes, an organization gives something, and so we are trying to make sure we note that appropriately," Lipson said.
"Where there anything of value being exchanged, we would absolutely want to know if these are coming from people looking for influence," said Chicago Inspector General Deborah Witzburg.
When asked if she can understand why people are considered about the possible writ pro quo?
"I understand the concern, and that's why we're making it available to the public," Lipson said.
The city donates portions of what it has received every few months. In a few weeks, the gift closet will be open to the public to see what's inside.
The mayor said he'd never been to the room when the Inspector General report first came out. Last week, it was mentioned during his heated questioning on Capitol Hill about Chicago being a sanctuary city.
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It doesn't matter that the size and scope have been different in Los Angeles (at present, the L.A. protests do not, for instance, resemble the 100-plus nights of demonstrations and clashes between protesters and police that took place in Portland, Oregon, in 2020): Influencers and broadcasters on the right have seized on the association with those previous protests, insinuating that this next installment, like all sequels, will be a bigger and bolder spectacle. Politicians are running the sequel playbook—Senator Tom Cotton, who wrote a rightly criticized New York Times op-ed in 2020 urging Trump to 'Send in the Troops' to quash BLM demonstrations, wrote another op-ed, this time for The Wall Street Journal, with the headline 'Send in the Troops, for Real.' (For transparency's sake, I should note that I worked for the Times opinion desk when the Cotton op-ed was published and publicly objected to it at the time.) 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We are living through the regime of a budding authoritarian—the emergency is here, now—yet our cities are not yet on fire in the way that many shock jocks say they are. The only way out of this mess begins with resisting the distortions. In many cases, the first step is to state things plainly. Los Angeles is not a lawless, postapocalyptic war zone. The right to protest is constitutionally protected, and protests have the potential to become violent—consider how Trump is attempting to use the force of the state to silence dissent against his administration. There are thousands more peaceful demonstrations scheduled nationally this weekend. The tools that promised to empower us, connect us, and bring us closer to the truth are instead doing the opposite. A meaningful percentage of American citizens appears to have dissociated from reality. In fact, many of them seem to like it that way.
