The radical Left can’t stay out of trouble. They’re being expose for all sorts of corruption.
And this Leftist Senator was caught red-handed in this heinous scandal.
Legal scholars are raising eyebrows at what they call a glaring double standard involving Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I. The senator, a vocal critic of so-called “dark money” in politics, now finds himself at the center of an ethics complaint tied to millions in federal grants awarded to a nonprofit linked to his wife. Critics argue the situation exposes a contradiction between Whitehouse’s public stance and his actions.
Mike Davis, who once served as chief counsel for nominations under former Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, didn’t mince words. “Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, who has made his political career accusing others of dark money corruption, appears to be throwing stones in his glass house,” he said.
The remark cuts to the heart of the controversy: Whitehouse’s long-standing crusade against opaque financial influence in government now stands in stark contrast to the allegations leveled against him.
Brett Tolman, a former U.S. attorney and current executive director of Right On Crime, took it a step further. “This is the height of hypocrisy,” he told Fox News Digital. “Sen Whitehouse is a former U.S. attorney and the self-proclaimed watchdog of dark money.” For Tolman, the issue isn’t just a slip-up—it’s a textbook case of Washington’s ethical gray zones.
“This is corruption, Washington, D.C., style,” he added. “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.”
The accusations stem from Whitehouse’s votes on legislation that paved the way for hefty federal grants to Ocean Conservancy, an environmental nonprofit with ties to his wife, Sandra Whitehouse. According to USASpending.gov, the group has raked in over $14.2 million in federal funding since 2008.
Just this past year, it scored two big wins: a $5.2 million grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in September for marine debris cleanup, and a $1.7 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for the same cause. Both funding streams flowed from bills Whitehouse supported—the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the EPA’s annual appropriations bill.
Sandra Whitehouse, per her LinkedIn profile, has been president of Ocean Wonks LLC, a consulting firm, since 2017. Before that, she worked directly for Ocean Conservancy as a senior policy advisor starting in 2008. The overlap has fueled questions about whether the senator’s legislative decisions crossed ethical lines.
The Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT), a watchdog group focused on potential ethics breaches by Democratic lawmakers, has called for a formal probe.
In a letter to Senate Select Committee on Ethics Chair James Lankford, R-Okla., and Vice Chair Chris Coons, D-Del., FACT urged an investigation into whether Whitehouse violated Senate conflict-of-interest rules. Thomas Jipping, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, agreed.
“Of course, that’s what they exist to do,” he told Fox News Digital, referring to the Ethics Committee’s role. He pointed to FACT’s complaint as grounded in “specific facts that back up a claim that there’s an ethical violation.”
Whitehouse’s team pushed back hard. Spokesperson Stephen DeLeo told Fox News Digital, “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.” The statement suggests Whitehouse sees the accusations as a recycled political hit job rather than a legitimate concern.
The senator’s critics, however, find the timing rich. Whitehouse has spent a long time targeting conservative Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, accusing them of ethical lapses and even championing a push for a binding ethics code for the court—a move some say threatens judicial independence.
Jipping couldn’t help but marvel at the twist. “The irony here absolutely takes my breath away,” he said. “He now appears to be embroiled in such an obvious conflict of interest.”
Not everyone’s convinced there’s fire behind the smoke. Attorney Bradley P. Moss, speaking to Fox News Digital, called the allegations “a considerable stretch to find even the appearance of a conflict of interest.”
He turned his attention elsewhere, expressing bigger worries about SpaceX engineers from Elon Musk’s team working with the Federal Aviation Administration to overhaul air traffic control. The Department of Transportation insists those engineers, part of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency crew, are walled off from the FAA’s commercial space oversight arm as special government employees.
For Jipping, the Whitehouse flap could be a litmus test. This is an “opportunity for the ethics committee to show that they are in fact nonpartisan,” he said. Whether the panel takes up the challenge—and how it rules—could ripple far beyond the senator’s Rhode Island office. For now, the clash of principles and politics keeps the spotlight firmly fixed on Capitol Hill.
Stay tuned to The Federalist Wire.
