Ethics concerns surface from Bruce Harrell’s time as Seattle City Council president Ashley Hiruko November 04, 2025 / 12:49 pm

It was late summer 2022 when a Seattle city staffer made a risky move.

She’d heard something that unsettled her – a male colleague told her that Bruce Harrell had tried to interfere with a case he had investigated back when Harrell was city council president.

The male colleague had been investigating allegations of wage theft at the Royal Esquire Club, a Black men’s social club in Columbia City. Harrell, board chair of the club at the time, had called the investigator and made him uneasy.

It’s been seven years since Harrell had that conversation with the investigator – but it set into motion a series of events that have called into question whether the c

See Full Page