Legal experts are pointing out what they say is hypocrisy as Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., faces an ethics complaint over a potential conflict of interest that resulted in millions of dollars in federal grants for a nonprofit associated with his wife.
"Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, who has made his political career accusing others of dark money corruption, appears to be throwing stones in his glass house," said Mike Davis, the former chief counsel for nominations to former Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.
"This is the height of hypocrisy," Brett Tolman, former U.S. attorney and executive director of Right On Crime, told Fox News Digital. "Sen Whitehouse is a former US attorney and the self-proclaimed watchdog of dark money."
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Legal experts are sounding off on whether an alleged ethical violation by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse should be investigated. (Reuters)
Whitehouse spokesperson Stephen DeLeo told Fox News Digital in a statement, "The ‘legal experts’ at Fox News should review the bipartisan dismissal issued by the Senate Ethics Committee the last time a dark-money group attempted these same kinds of smears."
Whitehouse voted for legislation that ultimately provided millions of dollars in funding for grants to environmental nonprofit group Ocean Conservancy, which works with his wife, Sandra Whitehouse, and pays her through a consulting firm.
The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT), an ethics watchdog, wrote to Senate Select Committee on Ethics Chair James Lankford, R-Okla., and Vice Chair Chris Coons, D-Del., this week, asking them to investigate Whitehouse "to determine whether he violated the Senate ethics rules on conflicts of interest." The group works primarily to draw attention to potential Democrat lawmaker ethics violations.
"This is not just a careless ethical lapse in judgment," Tolman added. "This is corruption, Washington, D.C., style. This is literally what many public officials have been prosecuted for by DOJ (Department of Justice). I’m aware of multiple cases DOJ is pursuing right now with less egregious facts."
Thomas Jipping, senior legal fellow with the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital the Ethics Committee should investigate the allegation against Whitehouse.
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Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse is being accused by an ethics watchdog of a potential conflict of interest. (Getty Images)
"Of course, that's what they exist to do," he said.
"I was struck by the fact that they are arguing" and that the complaint from FACT has "specific facts that back up a claim that there’s an ethical violation," Jipping said.
As he referenced, FACT provided information to support a potential conflict of interest.
Ocean Conservancy has notably received over $14.2 million in federal grants since 2008, per USASpending.gov. In 2024 alone, it was given two sizable grants, one for $5.2 million from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for marine debris cleanup in September, and another for $1.7 million from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), also to assist with marine debris cleanup.
The grants were funded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and the EPA’s annual appropriations bill. Whitehouse voted for both.
Per her LinkedIn page, Whitehouse's wife, Sandra, is employed as president of consulting firm Ocean Wonks LLC and has been since 2017. She was previously a direct employee of Ocean Conservancy, as its senior policy advisor starting in 2008.
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The Democrats have led an effort to pass an ethics code to be applied to the court. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib, File)
Jipping said the senator never provided sufficient evidence for his various ethical claims against conservative Supreme Court justices.
Whitehouse has long crusaded against conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, accusing them of ethical wrongdoing. The Democrat has even spearheaded an effort to put a Supreme Court ethics code into law, which has drawn serious criticism as some warn it would effectively allow the legislature to govern the court.
"The irony here absolutely takes my breath away," Jipping remarked. "He now appears to be embroiled in such an obvious conflict of interest."
However, not everyone agreed. Attorney Bradley P. Moss told Fox News Digital, "from what is described in the media report, this seems like a considerable stretch to find even the appearance of a conflict of interest."
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Whitehouse is a climate hawk. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
He said he was more concerned about engineers from billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX assisting the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to modernize air traffic control.
According to the Department of Transportation (DOT), the engineers are part of Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team at the FAA and are special government employees. Their work in this capacity is being kept separate from the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation, they said.
Jipping said Whitehouse's situation is an "opportunity for the ethics committee to show that they are in fact nonpartisan."
Lankford and Coons did not provide comment to Fox News Digital in time for publication.