Rhode Island Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse has an extended history of approving funds that directly benefit the nonprofit for which his wife has worked for almost two decades, according to an ethics complaint from the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust.
The watchdog wrote in a letter to Oklahoma Republican Senator James Lankford, who chairs the Senate Ethics Committee, that the lawmaker has voted for funds that benefit Ocean Conservancy, a nonprofit that pays his wife, Sandra Whitehouse, through her consulting firm.
Ocean Conservancy has been “awarded nineteen government grants worth approximately $14.2 million” since the year 2008, but almost half of the funding came in the fall of 2024 for grants pertaining to marine cleanup. Whitehouse voted for the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which provided Ocean Conservancy a $5.2 million grant, and an annual appropriations bill for the Environmental Protection Agency, which provided Ocean Conservancy a $1.7 million grant.
