Legal experts point out what they say as Senator Sheldon White House faces ethical complaints about a multi-million dollar conflict of interest in federal grants to nonprofits related to his wife.
“Senator Sheldon White House, who has created a political career that accused others of dark money corruption, appears to be throwing stones at his glass house,” said Mike Davis, the former lead lawyer for the nomination of Chuck Grassley, former Senate President of former Senate Attorney Chuck Grassley.
“This is high in hypocrisy,” Brett Tolman, a former US lawyer and executive director of Rights On Crime, told Fox News Digital. “The Sen White House is a former US lawyer and self-proclaimed dark money watchdog.”
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Legal experts are ringing about whether there is a need to investigate alleged ethical violations by Sen. Sheldon White House. (Reuters)
“The “legal experts” at Fox News should consider the bipartisan termination issued by the Senate Ethics Committee and the last time the Dark Money Group attempted these same types of smears,” White House spokesman Stephen Deleo told Fox News Digital.
The White House, in partnership with his wife, Sandra Whitehouse, voted for a law that would ultimately provide funding for grants to Ocean Conservancy, an environmental nonprofit that would pay her through consulting companies.
The Foundation for Accountability and Citizen Trust, an ethics watchdog group, has been announced this week that this week, R-Okla's ethics committee chairman James Lankford and vice-chairman Chris Koons, d-del. urged the vice-chairman to investigate the White House and decide whether he violated the Senate ethical rules on profit disputes. The group works primarily to draw attention to potential Democrats' ethical violations.
“This is not just a careless ethical judgment,” Tolman added. “This is corruption, Washington, DC, style. This is literally a lot of civil servants have been charged by the DOJ (Doctor of Justice). I know that DOJ is pursuing such awful facts now.”
Thomas Zippip, a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation's Edwin MEEESE III Center for Legal and Justice Studies, told FOX News Digital that the Ethics Committee should investigate allegations against the White House.
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Senator Sheldon White House is being charged by the ethics watchdog of potential conflicts of interest. (Getty Images)
“Of course, that's what they do,” he said.
“I was impressed by the fact that they were making claims,” Zipping said the complaints from the facts “have specific facts supporting the allegations that there is an ethical violation.”
As he referenced, the facts provided information to support a potential conflict of interest.
Ocean Conservancy has won more than $14.2 million in federal grants since 2008 for each USASPENDING.GOV. In 2024 alone, two major grants were given $5.2 million from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for marine debris cleaning up in September, and $1.7 million from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The grant was funded through the bipartisan Infrastructure Act and the EPA's annual spending bill. The White House voted for both.
According to her LinkedIn page, White House wife Sandra is employed as president of consulting firm Ocean Wonks LLC, and has been with her since 2017. She previously was a direct employee of Ocean Conservancy as a senior policy advisor since 2008.
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Democrats led efforts to pass codes of ethics that apply to the courts. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib/file)
Zippip said the senators did not provide sufficient evidence on his various ethical claims to justice in the conservative Supreme Court.
The White House has long been following the Crusades on conservative justice Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, who have denounced them for ethical misconduct. Democrats led the efforts to include the Supreme Court ethics law into law.
“The irony here definitely takes my breath away,” Zippip said. “It looks like he's now caught up in such a clear conflict of interest.”
But not everyone agreed. Attorney Bradley P. Moss told Fox News Digital, “From what is explained in the media reports, this seems like a considerable stretch to find the appearance of a conflict of interest.”
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The White House is a climate horse. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call by Getty Images)
He said billionaire Elon Musk's SpaceX engineers are more concerned about the engineers the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) helps modernize air traffic control.
According to the Ministry of Transport, the engineers are part of MUSK's FAA's Government Efficiency Bureau team and are special government officials. Their work in this ability is kept separate from the FAA's Commercial Space Transportation Agency, they said.
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Zippip said the White House situation is “an opportunity to show that the Ethics Committee is in fact nonpartisan.”
Rankford and Coons did not provide comment to Fox News Digital in time for the release.
