Mystery dinner sparked fears lawmaker's guest was a 'Russian honeypot': report

Some colleagues of Rep. Jim Costa (D-CA) worried that a young woman he brought to a congressional dinner in Brussels, days before Russia invaded Ukraine, might have been a Russian honeypot, according to an exclusive report Friday from Sources Say.

The dinner took place during a congressional delegation's Feb. 18-24, 2022, trip to Belgium for a NATO Parliamentary Assembly meeting, reporter Juliegrace Brufke wrote, citing multiple people familiar with the trip. Russian forces poured into Ukraine on the trip's last day.

Two sources said the woman indicated she was Polish. But when a colleague on the trip who speaks Polish tried to talk with her, she didn't seem to follow him, according to the report. A third source, who attended the dinner and heard about the exchange afterward, remembered her nationality differently: Ukrainian, a language that source said she couldn't speak either.

"It became blatantly obvious that she was probably a Russian asset," one source told the outlet. A second attendee confirmed the language gap but said they could not say what she was.

According to one source, Costa told the group he already knew the woman and that she was in town at the time. The source rejected that explanation in crude terms.

Costa denied the account and said his guest was Ukrainian.

"These claims are baseless. We are talking about hearsay surrounding a dinner that took place four years ago, involving a Ukrainian guest who had permission from the CODEL chair to attend," he said in a statement. "In the four years since, not one of my colleagues on that CODEL raised these supposed concerns with me."

The chair was then-Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), who at the time was president of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. He died in May 2025. Costa declined to name the woman, and Sources Say was unable to confirm who she was.

In May, NOTUS reported that House ethics officials had investigated Costa over alleged inappropriate advances toward two congressional interns. The Ethics Committee dismissed the case. A Costa spokesperson said the vote was unanimous, and Costa has denied wrongdoing.

In 1986, as a California assemblyman, Costa apologized after offering to pay a woman for sex, the Los Angeles Times reported at the time.

Costa, 74, has represented the Central Valley in Congress since 2005.