Information uncovered by Chief Investigator Steve Wilson is raising new questions about who's paying Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's soaring legal and PR bills -- and recent trips on expensive private jets.

Wilson: It was seven years ago that the city of Detroit wrote into its charter and city law an Ethics Code for city officials. Its purpose is to see that they avoid conduct that has even the *appearance* of being improper. Even so, as we first told you earlier, Mayor Kilpatrick and the First Family are getting big personal benefits and refusing to disclose who’s really paying the bill and what the givers are getting in return.

Kilpatrick: My private attorneys that I’m using now? I’m paying for.

Wilson: You’re paying for the private attorneys? Not the taxpayers?

Kilpatrick: Not the taxpayers, yes, thank you.

Well maybe not the taxpayers. The city council and the rest of us will only know for sure when an audit is completed, but the mayor refuses to provide a speck of documentation that his lawyers, and his well-paid spin doctors and image shapers, including Judy Smith from Impact Strategies in Washington, are indeed being paid with the mayor’s own money as he claims and not by some secret fund or a supporter who has a financial interest like a fat city contract or the chance to get one.

Prof. Peter Henning/WSU Ethics Expert: Then it simply becomes a situation of ‘trust me, I won’t do anything wrong’…

Law professor Peter Henning once worked with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission and says officials have a duty to disclose who pays their bills and provides expensive gifts…. like tens of thousands of dollars worth of private jet travel that we’ve now learned the mayor and First Family have quietly been enjoying even as scandal has swirled around them.

Wilson: Who provided the private jets for your Florida vacation travel?

Mayor: Oh my goodness. Anybody else?

The mayor seemed shocked I knew.

Wilson: Sir, who provided the jets? Why won’t you answer?

The trip we’re asking about was arranged by Pentastar Aviation owned by Edsel Ford who previously sought to operate at City Airport. A source has told us these flights were not paid by the mayor or the city, so why might such an expensive gift be given, you ask? The ethics expert says…

Prof. Henning: Of course sometimes gifts are given in the hope that sometime down the road, you’ll receive favorable treatment, perhaps nothing more than access. It can be quite valuable to get your phone call returned.

New ethics laws that govern members of Congress ban such travel…but here in Detroit despite a city ordinance that bars even the appearance of wrongdoing, the mayor’s office will only say: “We do not respond to questions regarding how Mayor Kilpatrick spends quality time with his family.”

Mayor: Steve, I’m not answering any of those questions.

Wilson: Why not, Mr. Mayor? Why not?

But his honor and his family like the high life. So it was just the other day that Pentastar arranged for a jet, an eight-seater flying out of Southwest Michigan to fly over to City Airport, pick up the First Lady and the mayor’s three children and squire them back down to Florida during Detroit schools’ winter break.

The plane returned empty…a roundtrip flight quoted at as much as $23,000.

A few days later, the mayor hopped a commercial flight to Florida and less than 24 hours after that, the Citation I was dispatched back here to Florida where we watched as the family climbed aboard for the flight home.

Our cameras were not seen when the plane then landed back at City Airport. When the doors opened and the children climbed out first, then First Lady Carlita got out….followed by Hizzoner himself, seen heading across the tarmac to the terminal.

Wilson: Mr Mayor, is my information wrong, Sir? Mr Mayor, do you want to get caught again with another one of these things? Can’t you just tell me the truth? Mr. Mayor? One last opportunity to tell the people the truth, Sir.

Later, his office issued another statement about these flights: Because they are personal and not paid for with tax money, it said, the flights “are not subject to any public information requirements and will not be discussed.”

Edsel Ford also refuses to comment about why his Pentastar company is a common denominator in all these trips…and specifically, what if any role did he and Pentastar have in facilitating these expensive excursions?

Our best estimate: The flight down and back to drop off the wife and kids…

And then the flight down and back to pick them and the mayor up…

Some business, some individual, some secret fund has shelled out a fortune for just these four legs.

Peter Henning: If they’re not gaining anything out of it, their shareholders would like them to invest their resources that’s going to make a greater profit…

And as for the mayor, in a case like this…

Henning: It’s hard to say that I’m not influenced by this particular gift if you don’t know the circumstances of the gift. Then it simply becomes a situation of, I promise I’m not doing anything wrong.