Sarah B. Rogers, a top official at the State Department, took a vacation last November to the Mediterranean that was paid for by Irish billionaire Patrick Collison, according to a preliminary financial disclosure obtained by The Washington Post.
Collison, who co-founded the payments company Stripe and serves on the board of Meta, covered the expenses for the entire group, Rogers said in the disclosure. She described Collison as a “pre-existing friend predating my government service” and said the trip was “for purposes of tourism.”
Rogers valued the gift from Collison at $11,900 in the disclosure.
The November trip came one month after Rogers was sworn in as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs — a role responsible for “informing and influencing foreign publics,” according to a State Department description.
The existence of the trip, which has not been previously reported, was disclosed in a preliminary annual financial disclosure obtained by The Post through a public-records request. The filing has been reviewed by a State Department attorney but has not been certified by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, the independent agency that sets ethics standards for the executive branch of the government, according to the document.
A State Department spokesperson wrote in a statement that Rogers has known Collison for several years and that the trip was planned before her confirmation.
Rogers flew on Collison’s private plane with a group that also included Tyler Cowen, an economist and professor at George Mason University, the spokesperson said.
The spokesperson also said that the estimated value of the trip represents a “high-end range” of the trip, including the equivalent cost of a commercial flight.
Rogers disclosed the trip to the State Department, the Office of Government Ethics and on her annual disclosure form, the spokesperson added, noting that Rogers has never participated in any government matter involving Stripe.
“Under Secretary Rogers remains committed to upholding the highest standards of professionalism, integrity, and ethics for which the Department and Secretary Rubio are known,” the spokesperson said.
A spokesperson for Collison said in a statement that he and Rogers have been friends for “several years” and that he has taken personal friends on an annual trip for the past eight years.
During the trip that included Rogers, the group visited “museums and historical sites in various cities, including the Grand Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Tbilisi’s churches, and the Heraklion Archaeological Museum,” the spokesperson said, referring to sites in Egypt, Georgia and Greece.
The spokesperson said there were “no business meetings conducted” on the trip and that Stripe has no business before the State Department.
Cowen, in an email, said the same. “This is a trip Patrick and I organize every year to various cities throughout the world to visit historic sites and museums with a handful of friends.”
Federal regulations generally prohibit government employees from accepting or soliciting gifts from people “because of the employee’s official position.” But the rules make an exception for gifts “motivated by a family relationship or personal friendship rather than the position of the employee.” Employees and agencies are supposed to consider “the history and nature of the relationship” when determining whether it is acceptable.
Ethics experts who reviewed the disclosure for The Post said that they didn’t have enough information based on the filing to determine whether the trip violated the law.
The trip falls into an ethical gray area, they added, because a senior government official accepting an expensive vacation could create the appearance of impropriety.
“I think the best practice for any government employee is to avoid accepting even permissible gifts to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest,” said Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on government wrongdoing.
He added, however, that Rogers’s claim that Collison paid for every member of the trip — not just her — made him less concerned about potential ethical violations.
Federal ethics law states that employees need to consider “whether acceptance of a gift would lead a reasonable person with knowledge of the relevant facts to question their integrity or impartiality.”
Rogers, 43, is a lawyer who describes herself as a “free-speech activist” and has campaigned against online censorship. In private practice, she represented the National Rifle Association, Turning Point USA and tech investor Nat Friedman, currently an executive at Meta, according to a separate financial disclosure filed last year.
President Donald Trump in March nominated her to lead the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees Voice of America, a news organization whose ranks and overseas broadcasting capabilities have been decimated during Trump’s second term in office. Rogers was nominated for the role after a judge ruled that Kari Lake was illegally running the agency.
The Senate has not yet held a confirmation vote.
Rogers has interacted with Collison’s account on X from her official government account.
Shortly after the vacation, Collison wrote that he thought there was a “vibe shift afoot in Silicon Valley around what one should work on and what is worthwhile.” Rogers replied by quote-tweeting it from her official State Department account.
And last month, after Collison spoke at a fireside chat at a White House science event with Trump’s top science and technology adviser, Rogers reposted a video of the event.
Collison, 38, alongside his younger brother John, co-founded Stripe in 2010 and serves as its chief executive. The company, which signed agreements earlier this year that valued it at $159 billion, is one of the most valuable privately owned firms in the world. Collison’s net worth jumped more than 70 percent this year to $16.3 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Collison is an Irish citizen and has said in social media posts that he holds a green card that allows him to live and work in the United States. He has occasionally been involved in U.S. politics.
A week before the 2016 election, Collison contributed $250,000 to a PAC supporting presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and other Democrats, according to campaign finance records. Around the time that Trump was inaugurated in 2017, Collison wrote on Twitter that “Trump’s stated immigration policies would be economically damaging and will in time be seen as morally wrong.”
In recent years, Collison has shifted his political spending, contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republicans, according to campaign finance records. This year, he contributed more than $33 million to successful efforts to defeat a California wealth tax, according to a Post analysis.
He frequently posts his musings about technology, history and other subjects on his X account, which has more than 1.8 million followers. “I often agree with those of a supply-side, free market, and abundance-oriented persuasion,” he says on his website.
At the State Department, officials have faced scrutiny for their ties to wealthy individuals. Kimberly Guilfoyle resigned last month as the U.S. ambassador to Greece following the Wall Street Journal’s reporting that she asked a political donor for $100,000 to pay her personal credit card bill in exchange for political access. Guilfoyle has denied wrongdoing.
In the aftermath, Secretary of State Marco Rubio sent a department-wide memo reminding staffers to avoid conflicts of interest. He reiterated that in a recent meeting that was first reported by Reuters.
Rubio told reporters on Monday that he takes ethics in the department very seriously.
“I can tell you at the Department of State — and I’ve made this very clear from the very beginning — there have been multiple things that have been sent out to make this very clear about what the ethical standards we expect everyone to abide by, and we’re going to continue to reiterate that,” he said. “That precedes whatever happened in Greece and anywhere else. We have a process for addressing those things, and we take that very seriously.”
Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who studies government ethics, said the State Department’s claim that Rogers is committed to upholding a high ethical standard rings hollow. That standard, she said, “apparently includes accepting an extravagant gift from a billionaire.”
Clark said there was a “really simple fix” for any questions about whether the gift was appropriate: “paying for it herself.”
Elizabeth Dwoskin and Joshua Keating contributed to this report.
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