Ethics watchdog flags senator helping wife rake in millions for nonprofit

FIRST ON FOX: Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., is being accused of violating ethics rules after backing laws that financially benefited his wife’s environmental organization. 

The Democratic senator and climate hawk voted for key laws that provided funding for grants to the environmental non-profit group that works with his wife, Sandra Whitehouse, and pays her through a consulting firm. 

The ethics watchdog, the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT), is asking the Senate Select Committee on Ethics Chairman James Lankford, R-Okla., and Vice Chairman Chris Coons, D-Del., 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 Democratic lawmaker ethics violations. 

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Whitehouse’s wife, Sandra, is employed as president of consulting firm Ocean Wonks LLC and has been since 2017, per her LinkedIn page. Before that, she was a direct employee of Ocean Conservancy, serving as Senior Policy Adviser beginning in 2008. 

Ocean Conservancy has received more than $14.2 million in federal grants since 2008, per USASpending.gov. During 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), again to assist with marine debris cleanup. 

The former was funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) championed by the Biden administration and voted for by Sen. Whitehouse. The latter was funded through the EPA’s annual appropriations bill, which Whitehouse also voted for. 

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“While these two grants alone appear to be a conflict of interest, it is even more egregious in the context of Senator Whitehouse’s long history of working on legislation being lobbied for by organizations tied to his wife,” wrote FACT Executive Director Kendra Arnold. 

“Altogether, Ocean Conservancy has spent millions on federal lobbying expenses over the years on issues relating to oceans, climate change, and environmental cleanup—issues directly championed by Senator Whitehouse, a longtime member (and current Ranking Member) of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee and the co-founder of the Senate’s so-called ‘Oceans Caucus.”

Since 2010, Ocean Conservancy has paid Whitehouse a total of $2,686,800 either directly or through her firm, per tax documents. 

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“Dr. Sandra Whitehouse, a well-respected marine ecologist and ocean policy consultant, has not received compensation from these federal grants allocated to Ocean Conservancy,” Ocean Conservancy’s Vice President of External Affairs Jeff Watters told Fox News Digital in a statement.

“For 40 years, Ocean Conservancy has been a global leader in marine debris cleanup through our signature initiative, the International Coastal Cleanup. The marine debris cleanup grants Ocean Conservancy received from NOAA came from laws passed with broad bipartisan support that then went through a competitive, independent selection process which designated Ocean Conservancy to be one among hundreds of NGOs to receive funding. Ocean Conservancy’s selection was based on our decades of expertise in addressing marine debris and protecting the ocean.”

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“With the support of these bipartisan federal funds, Ocean Conservancy plans to remove hundreds of thousands of pounds of trash from beaches and waterways around the U.S., which will not only protect these places for generations of Americans to enjoy but improve the health of our fishing and tourism industries,” he said. 

Watters further pointed to the notable Republican support both the BIL and the EPA appropriations bill received in the Senate. 

Whitehouse, Lankford and Coons did not provide comment to Fox News Digital in time for publication.