The report revealed that the nonprofit Aspen Institute has been sponsoring trips for lawmakers and their spouses to a Rockefeller Foundation-owned villa in Lake Como, where attendees take part in briefings on issues like food insecurity, climate change, and artificial intelligence.
Lawmakers describe the retreats as opportunities for bipartisan relationship-building and policy learning.
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Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.) told NOTUS: “It’s one of the few opportunities we have to actually work with our colleagues across the aisle on topics of great interest and importance."
He continued: “America needs to be dominant in the energy sector, and we discussed many different aspects of it, describing the trips as "very valuable.”
Rep. Randy Webe (R-TX) said: “They put us on a small houseboat and took us over across the lake to a little villa, if you will, and the restaurant there. You talk about Italian, it was Italian."
But he said he was "a little disappointed" because they never got to try any Italian pizza." Still, he said the conference was "very bipartisan” and “very beneficial.”
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Since 2023, more than 50 members of Congress have traveled to the exclusive Rockefeller Foundation villa on Italy’s Lake Como, with expenses for airfare, lodging, and meals — often totaling between $10,000 and $20,000 — covered by the Aspen Institute, according to ethics disclosures reviewed by NOTUS.
The nonprofit, which bills itself as a champion of a “free, just, and equitable society,” sponsors these high-end trips as part of its congressional programming, which includes policy discussions on technology, climate change, public health, and more.
The initiative is overseen by former Congressman Charlie Dent, a onetime House Ethics Committee chair, who now heads Aspen’s congressional affairs and facilitates approval through official ethics channels.
Invitations are extended to both Republicans and Democrats, who argue that the trips are valuable opportunities and place no burden on taxpayers.
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