Exhibit 44

San Jose Mercury News: Mike Honda took trip to Turkey on iffy group's dime
10/30/2015
Page 1 of 1

Mike Honda took trip to Turkey on iffy group's dime

By Josh Richman
jrichman@bayareanewsgroup.com
San Jose Mercury News
Posted:Fri Oct 30 16:35:28 MDT 2015

Congressman Mike Honda is among a group of lawmakers who accepted trips from organizations secretly funded by a Turkish religious movement in
apparent violation of House rules and possibly federal law, USA Today has reported.
An article published online Thursday evening said that Honda, D-San Jose, took a 2013 trip to Turkey and that the Pacifica Institute picked the $5,675 tab.
The institute had certified to the House Ethics Committee that it had been designated it as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charitable group by the IRS, but the agency
has no record of such a designation, the newspaper said.
The Ethics Committee approved the trip on Aug. 14, 2013, and Honda went to Turkey that year from Aug. 20 to 28.
"The congressman, quite simply, took a trip approved by the House," Honda spokeswoman Lauren Smith said in an email Friday. "Note that this was also
after trips taken by other members and staff that were also approved."
The House Ethics Committee currently is investigating Honda -- but not for his travel. The probe is focused on allegations that his campaign and his office
blurred or crossed their lines in violation of House rules or federal law.
Honda is currentlyfending off a second consecutive challenge from fellow Democrat Ro Khanna as he seeks a ninth term in 2016. And Khanna has made
the alleged ethical violations a major campaign issue.
On a form filed with the Ethics Committee a month before his 2013 trip, Honda wrote that "this trip will inform my work on the Appropriations Committee by
providing a better understanding of bilateral relations between the U.S. and Turkey regarding economic trade, security, and regional stability."
Honda checked a box on that form saying he was unaware "of any registered federal lobbyists or foreign agents involved in planning, organizing,
requesting, and/or arranging the trip."
USA Today reported that a 2008 cable from the U.S. embassy in Turkey, released by the online whistleblower clearinghouse Wikileaks, describes the
Pacifica Institute as a "sister organization" of a Turkish-based group called the Bosphorus-Atlantic Association of Cultural Cooperation and Friendship,
known by its Turkish initials BAKIAD.
BAKIAD secretly funded the Turkish leg of a trip to Azerbaijan taken by 10 other members of Congress who took 32 staffers in May 2013, according to a
report filed this month by the Office of Congressional Ethics. That trip was sponsored by groups connected to a worldwide moderate Islamic movement led
by a religious scholar named Fethullah Glen, who has been accused by the Turkish government of attempting a coup in that country, USA Today
reported. Turkish leaders have asked the United States to extradite Glen from a remote compound in rural Pennsylvania where he has lived for 20 years.
USA Today identified 214 congressional trips sponsored by Glen organizations that seem to have been improperly disclosed, with similar itineraries that
included visits to the same historical sites, and meetings with Glenist journalists, lawmakers and business associations.
Honda was among dozens of House members, including others from the Bay Area, who signed a February 2015 letter urging U.S. Secretary of State John
Kerry to help secure the release of Glenist journalists who had been arrested by the Turkish government.
Mahmut Altun, the Pacifica Institute's Northern California director, signed and filed forms with the Ethics Committee before Honda's trip in which he said his
organization was a charitable nonprofit and that the trip would not be financed by any foreign agents.
Altun, reached by phone Friday, said he was driving and couldn't talk, and then hung up. He didn't respond to an emailed inquiry.
The Pacific Institute's website indicates it has offices in Sunnyvale -- at the Tasman Drive address that Altun listed on the Ethics Committee forms -- as well
as in Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego; the East Bay, Burlingame, the San Fernando Valley, Salt Lake City, Portland, Oregon, and Boise, Idaho.
Hari Sevugan, spokesman for Khanna's campaign, said Friday that there are "serious questions raised by these new revelations into how Mike Honda used
his office which the congressman will have to publicly answer."
"What is disturbing is that ethics violations and federal investigations are becoming a pattern with Congressman Honda overshadowing everything else,"
Sevugan said. "This is further evidence for the need for a fresh start in Washington with leadership that can focus on our common priorities, like education
and an economy that works for everyone, rather than on ties to narrow special interests."
Josh Richman covers politics. Follow him at Twitter.com/Josh_Richman. Read the Political Blotter at IBAbuzz.com/politics.

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2/11/2016