Violent crime was on the rise in Prince George's County, Maryland, in November 2022, but County Executive Angela Alsobrooks, who is now the Democratic nominee for the state's open Senate seat, had another thing on her mind: traveling around South Africa on the taxpayer's dime.
Alsobrooks led the delegation of county officials and local business leaders to South Africa purportedly to help drum up international investment in Prince George's County's economy. By all available metrics, Alsobrooks and her delegation had themselves a great time. Wanika Fisher, a member of the Prince George's County Council, posted daily updates of the delegation's travels on her Facebook page, showing the group touring Nelson Mandela's house, visiting local museums, attending lectures, and participating in discussions on how to boost South Africa's tourism industry.
But the trip, which cost county taxpayers $40,000, produced few tangible results for Alsobrooks's constituents in Prince George's County. Alsobrooks boasted publicly during the trip about two accomplishments. The first came on November 14, 2022, when Alsobrooks reaffirmed a sister-city relationship with the Royal Bafokeng Nation, a tribal community based in Phokeng, South Africa. The second came a day later, on November 15, when Alsobrooks signed an agreement with a boutique South African IT firm to open an office in a county-run building where rents run no more than $600 per month.
The delegation accomplished little else behind the scenes, the Washington Free Beacon has learned. Alsobrooks facilitated discussions between Prince George's County business leaders and South African officials meant to help alleviate the persistent blackouts caused by the nation's failing energy infrastructure, a county official told the Free Beacon. Despite Alsobrooks's best efforts, blackouts remain a major issue in the African country. South African officials warned citizens in January to expect upward of nine planned blackouts every day, an effort to avoid a "complete collapse" of the nation's energy grid, Africanews reported.
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Angela Alsobrooks (second from right) on her taxpayer-funded travel to Africa (Facebook screenshot)
Alsobrooks brought her daughter Alex along on the trip. Alex Alsobrooks was pictured attending the delegation's tour of Johannesburg's Constitution Hill on November 17, 2022. Three days later, she posted a TikTok video of highlights from her layover in Dubai, showing her meeting friends, touring the city, and enjoying a desert ATV excursion. Angela Alsobrooks's deputy chief of staff, John Erzen, said the county did not pay for Alex Alsobrooks's expenses on the trip.
As Angela Alsobrooks toured South Africa, her constituents at home were in the throes of a sharp rise in violent crime. The number of reported violent crimes in Prince George's County spiked more than 30 percent from the start of Alsobrooks's tenure, in 2018, through 2022, according to FBI crime statistics. Carjackings, meanwhile, increased nearly 500 percent under her watch from 2019 through 2023. Alsobrooks has come under fire for overseeing a severe shortage of police officers under her watch, with the Prince George's County Police Department down more than 300 officers as of late 2023. Her critics say the shortage is driven in part by Alsobrooks's decision in 2020 to take away $20 million in funding for a police training to build a public health center.
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Angela Alsobrooks (front right) on her taxpayer-funded travel to Africa (Facebook screenshot)
The lack of results from Alsobrooks's $40,000 junket to South Africa could also be ammunition for her Republican opponent, former governor Larry Hogan, who has argued that Alsobrooks lacks the experience to serve in the Senate. Alsobrooks has not publicly mentioned her excursion to South Africa since the conclusion of the trip on November 17, 2022.
The Prince George's County Economic Development Corporation, which coordinated the logistics for the trip, provided the Free Beacon with a list of four behind-the-scenes accomplishments of Alsobrooks's delegation, three of which could more appropriately be described as failures or works in progress.
For example, the Economic Development Corporation boasted that Alsobrooks's delegation met with Bafokeng Nation officials to see how the nation could assist with its persistent energy reliability issues. But those talks have yet to produce any tangible results, with rolling blackouts still running rampant in South Africa.
"Issues within the Bafokeng Nation have slowed those discussions, but they remain active," Economic Development Corporation spokeswoman Lori Valentine told the Free Beacon.
Valentine said Alsobrooks's delegation also "attempted" to set up a student exchange program with a South African college. But that too was a failure.
"While follow up meetings happened after the conclusion of the trip, due to changes in leadership at the Lebone II College in the Bafokeng Nation, this program did not come to fruition," Valentine said.
The delegation also held discussions to foster exchanges of artwork between local artists and artists from South Africa, Valentine said. But nearly two years have passed since Alsobrooks's delegation left South Africa, and so far an art exchange does not appear to have taken place. "There are ongoing relationships that are working to foster" those exchanges, Valentine told the Free Beacon.
The only tangible behind-the-scenes accomplishment Valentine provided was with an unnamed local movie producer who is in the "beginning stages of filming a movie in South Africa" thanks to Alsobrooks's work. "They are currently in the pre-production stage," Valentine said. "This came directly from meetings the producer had while on the trip."
Valentine also attempted to misdirect the Free Beacon, saying initially that Hogan, the governor of Maryland at the time of the trip, and his administration were involved in Alsobrooks's trip to South Africa.
"It should also be noted that while in Johannesburg, the county delegation met up with the Maryland State Delegation, which included members of the Maryland Department of Commerce Office of International Investment and Trade during then Governor Hogan's administration, for business briefings related to the local economy," Valentine told the Free Beacon on September 12.
But Maryland Department of Commerce spokeswoman Karen Hood said this assertion was not true.
"Our international team was not part of this trip, so the info you have is incorrect," Hood told the Free Beacon.
Hood said Alsobrooks's team asked the state commerce department for help facilitating communications between businesses in Prince George's County and South Africa before their departure. Hood said the commerce department provided Alsobrooks's delegation with access to a contractor located in South Africa to help facilitate those business discussions.
Valentine changed her tune when asked for the names of the Hogan administration officials who she originally said met with the Alsobrooks delegation in South Africa.
"The Dept of Commerce representative didn't travel with the County Executive's delegation to South Africa," Valentine told the Free Beacon on Monday, clarifying that an official with the Maryland Department of Commerce met with the Alsobrooks delegation "during a pre-mission info session, not in South Africa."
The Alsobrooks campaign did not return a request for comment.