Mayor Wu launches external investigation into top aide

The city of Boston is launching an external investigation into allegations of misconduct against a top aide to Mayor Michelle Wu.

In a letter to the Boston City Council, the head of the city's human resources department said her office is engaging an employment law firm to investigate allegations against Segun Idowu, the city’s chief of economic opportunity and inclusion. He is accused of being at the center of a violent argument between two city hall staffers last month.

“As we are following these steps, they're going to be conducted fully and appropriately,” Wu told WBUR after a community event Thursday. “The resulting actions will be based on what the findings are.”

The mayor did not say whether, based on the results, she would fire Idowu.

Critics have argued the Wu administration moved too quickly to fire the staffers, doing so to bury a scandal in an election year.

The saga began on May 15, when two city hall employees, Marwa Khudaynazar and Chulan Huang, were arrested by Boston police after fighting about Idowu’s alleged sexual advances to Khudaynazar. Khudaynazar and Huang were dating; Idowu oversees the department where Huang worked.

The city conducted an internal investigation that resulted in the decision to fire both staffers on May 20. The HR department did so because the staffers allegedly “invoke[d] their public positions to avoid consequences of an altercation with police,” Boston’s Chief People Officer Alex Lawrence wrote in the letter to the Boston City Council on Wednesday.

The city’s internal review did not find that Idowu, who is still Boston’s chief of economic opportunity and inclusion, violated “any law or city policy at that time,” Lawrence wrote.

“The city had not received any allegations of misconduct or harassment from any parties through the internal review process prior to the media reports,” her letter states.

In an interview with the Boston Globe published Monday, Khudaynzar said that Idowu kissed her on the lips and invited her up to his hotel room. She declined. That reporting appears to have triggered this new investigation.

Lawrence said whenever the city receives an allegation of employee misconduct from another current or former employee, or a member of the public, the human resources office “takes steps to review and takes employment action accordingly," she said.

Wu had defended that process at a press conference Wednesday, and reaffirmed it to WBUR on Thursday.

“We're following established protocols here,” she said, “where they are going through the process of making sure that we get to the bottom of what the facts are, in order to be able to take appropriate action.”

The letter from Lawrence came after city councilors Erin Murphy and Ed Flynn called for the city to conduct an independent investigation. ‭

Lawrence urged councilors not to get involved in personnel matters, citing city charter rules. In addition to exceeding its authority, she wrote, the council might “interfere with a fair and expeditious review for all involved.”

In a statement, Idowu, through his lawyer Jeffery Robbins, said he looks forward to “fully cooperating” with the investigation.

“I am grateful that a mechanism has been put in place to further fact check the outrageous insinuations that have been circulated at my expense,” he said.

Robbins went a step further: “Any suggestion by anyone that Mr. Idowu engaged in any form of sexual harassment whatsoever would be pure and unadulterated bulls--t, and defamatory bulls--t at that.”