And we filed an official ethics complaint with the Senate select Committee on Ethics to investigate the relationship between Sheldon White houses activities as a senator and his wife’s concerns as a consultant. But there are other ways that Congress can engage in unethical behavior or individual members can. And I guess one of the tried and true ways is to have your spouses or members of your family get involved in politics in a way that trades on your name.

And Joe Biden, obviously, being the epitome of this, we all think, we’re all led to believe that this corruption began only when he was vice president. Well, someone like Biden, he’s been doing that for years, even when he was Senate. You can be sure of, you know, the way it works is that you have members of your family that engage in lobbying or consulting on areas of public policy.

And the concern is, and what ethics rules require you to do is to avoid the appearance or actually doing any favors to benefit your spouse. Now, it’s one thing to support, let’s say your spouse is in the Senate, is just involved in a particular cause, and you kind of share the same outlook. You end up voting in ways that advance that cause. That’s not the issue here. The issue is the level of specific work that you do to advance the organizations which your wife is affiliated.

And that’s what seemed to be happening with a notorious left wing senator, Sheldon White House, who has been obsessed with alleging, quite often falsely and without foundation or using dubious analysis, supposed conflicts of interests of Supreme Court justices. He doesn’t like. He doesn’t like the idea, for instance, of amigas, briefs filed by corporations. He wants all that fully disclosed, undermining the First Amendment rights of everyone trying to litigate in the courts.

And it turns out he has significant ethics issues that judicial watch, he’s a powerful senator, took on. And we filed an official ethics complaint with the Senate select Committee on ethics to investigate the relationship between Sheldon White Houses activities as a senator and his wife’s concerns as a consultant. So this is what our complaint points out. The publicly available facts suggested Senator Whitehouse’s legislative activity, particularly his sponsorship of environmental legislation, funding his wife’s clients, and her specific area of expertise, marine spatial planning.

I didn’t know there was such an expertise, but I guess there is. Creates a reasonable appearance of a conflict of interest. Given this further investigation regarding Mrs. Whitehouse’s consulting activities, aided by the committee’s subpoena, power is warranted. And this is what’s going on. His wife, Sandra Thornton Whitehouse, is the president of Ocean Wonks, W o N K S, LLC, a for profit, limited liability environmental consulting company that was chartered in 2017 and has its principal place of business in Rhode Island.

Senator White House, as I said, is the senator from Rhode Island, a senator from Rhode island. Shortly after her husband’s election to the Senate in 2009, Mrs. Whitehouse and later her company, Ocean Wonks, became a consultant to at least two known nonprofit corporations focused on environmental issues. The Ocean Conservancy and Alta Sea Influence Watch, an entity that investigates these types of connections, found that Senator White House’s spouse made over $2.

6 million in total compensation from the ocean conservancy since 2009, when White House came into office. Her present level of compensation would make her the 8th highest earner among the employees there, higher than several vice presidents of the Ocean Conservancy, according to a May 2023 report by our friends over at the Daily Caller. Since its election to the Senate, White House has introduced at least 24 ocean related bills and co founded the Senate Oceans Caucus in 2011.

Now, we provide in the complaint, and I encourage you to read the entire complaint. It’s very know these ethics issues can sometimes run. Sometimes these members of Congress have plausible deniability. Right. They’re kind of separate enough. But his work here crossed the line, and we make a compelling case in the complaint. So in our complaint, we list 24 pieces of legislation that when you look at it or look at them strongly, indicate that they were passed in a way that would directly benefit, and arguably did benefit the senator’s wife’s consultancy, the companies that she helps.

And so when you look at the list of, I call it litigation legislation, it’s legislation you’ll see. And a lot of it’s been passed into law, but you got money flowing in a way that would benefit her clients, and if not her directly. So we make a strong case because it’s based on publicly available information about what the legislation does. So it’s not like we have to dive into the secret finances of the White House family to find this information.

And when you look at the ties between the legislation and Mrs. White House, it’s pretty devastating. So we cite the ethics rule at issue here. It’s the conflict of interest rule, and it’s pretty straightforward. Paragraph one of the Senate ethics Rule 37 states, a member shall not receive any compensation, nor shall he permit any compensation to accrue to his beneficial interest from any source, the receipt or accrual of which would occur by virtue of influence improperly exerted from his position as a member, officer or employee.

Paragraph of four of 37. This rule 37 further declares that a senator shall not, quote, knowingly use his official position to introduce or aid the progress of passage or passage of legislation, a principal purpose of which is to further only his pecuniary interest, only the pecuniary interest of his immediate family, or only the pecuniary interest of a limited class of persons or enterprises when he or his immediate family or enterprises controlled by them are members of the affected class.

The rules prohibition of conflicts of interests are designed to be broad and robust. There’s a report that accompanies the rule that describes its prior application. It states that the prohibitions on conflicts of interest are specifically designed to prevent conflict of interest or the appearance of such conflict of interest, which is equally damaging to public confidence. So it’s not only the actual conflict of interest, but the appearance of the conflict of interest.

That’s the standard. This rule prohibits a member from working for legislation, a principal purpose of which is to enhance his financial interests or the interests of his family. Now, of course, being married to Mrs. Whitehouse, it advances not only his financial interests because presumably her money is his money, but obviously she gets a cut, too. Paragraph one was intended as a broad prohibition against members deriving financial benefit, directly or indirectly from the use of the official position.

It’s broader than quid pro quo bribery. So we’re not just looking for bribery here. For example, if a senator intervened with an executive agency for the purpose of influencing a decision, which would result immeasurable, personable financial gain for him, the provisions of this paragraph would be violated. Thus, if a senator uses his official position in a manner that benefits him indirectly through the spouse, such spousal compensation would accrue his beneficial interest and violate paragraph one.

So this is a serious issue, in my view, for Senator White House. And the question is, is the ethics committee, which is comprised, unlike usual committees of Republicans and Democrats, an equal number, I forget the actual number of Senate ethics committee members, whether they’re going to do something about this. Given Senator White House’s longstanding practice of sponsoring or co sponsoring legislation that indirectly benefits his wife and or her clients, we urge the Senate Ethics Committee to conduct a preliminary investigation to disinter the full extent of Mrs.

Whitehouse’s consulting agreements with both for profit and non profit entities that may create a reasonable appearance of conflict of interest with her duties. So we’ll put up a screenshot of the New York Post here. You can see the New York Post covered this story, and other media are covering this story. As well. And it’s up to you, dear listener, dear viewer, to call your senator and ask them what they are going to do about this ethics issue concerning Senator Whitehouse.

Now, some of them may be uncomfortable because they’ve got spouses who are doing the same thing, and but for the grace of God go them when they look at what Senator White House is up to. But nevertheless, this is a pretty readily apparent issue of a conflict of interest that deserves full investigation by the Senate Ethics committee, not the cursory we got your letter. We don’t like it and therefore we’re not going to pursue it.

And this is what I said about it in our release on the topic. There is strong evidence that Senator White House may have violated Senate ethics conflicts of interest rules. The ethics committee should immediately investigate this serious issue. Senator White House seems to have stepped over the line of standard environmental legislative advocacy and used his Senate office to advance his and his wife’s personal and financial interest. So Senator Whitehouse is a powerful, influential senator.

You may not know him, but he’s one of the top senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee. And senators just even individually, are kind of uniquely powerful in our constitutional republic. And so the idea that they be held accountable to the really rarely enforced ethics rules in the Senate, I think, should go without saying. So, as I said, call your senators, ask them what they think and to review judicial watches.

Senate ethics complaint, which we’ll put a link to below, put a link to our release. You can see the complaint. This is judicial watch is effective, obviously, because of the work we do, the litigation, this complaint that we filed, we are direct in sense. We just don’t complain about something. We do something. We either file lawsuits or demand action through an access complaint, pursue FOIA investigations. But because we have such a strong following, millions of Americans support our work.

That’s where the power comes from to affect change and protect the rule of law. So if you follow up on this through phone calls to your senators, it’s going to get attention, believe you me, and I know my voice reaches millions through the Internet, through judicial watches, other communication streams. But I could tell you if just even a fraction communicate with their senators, we will get some significant action, I would think, from the Senate.

So I encourage you to call your senators at two oh two to 25312 120-225-3121 thanks for watching. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button and like our video down below. .

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