FLASHBACK: Dem senator embroiled in conflict of interest row targeted SCOTUS in ethics crusade
Sheldon Whitehouse's history of acting as a judicial ethics watchdog for conservative justices has left some calling the latest ethics complaint ironic
By Julia Johnson Fox News
Published March 3, 2025 1:17pm EST
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., is in the spotlight over a new ethics complaint about votes that ultimately yielded millions for a green nonprofit that pays his wife's consulting firm.
Before that, he led an aggressive campaign alleging ethical violations of conservative Supreme Court justices.
The Democratic senator took particular aim at conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas after several instances of undisclosed travel and trips were reported in 2023. "The Supreme Court justices are so deeply ensconced in a cocoon of special interest money that they can no longer be trusted to police themselves without proper process," Whitehouse claimed at the time.
This history of acting as a judicial ethics watchdog for conservative justices has left some calling the latest ethics complaint against Whitehouse from the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust (FACT) ironic.
"The irony here absolutely takes my breath away," Thomas Jipping, senior legal fellow with the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation, previously told Fox News Digital.
Whitehouse's office provided a letter to Fox News Digital from the Senate Select Committee on Ethics last year informing another watchdog group, Judicial Watch, that the senator's actions did not violate "federal laws, Senate rules, or other standards of conduct."
The group had filed a similar ethics complaint to FACT.
"This is a repeat dark money performance, and the previous attempt by a dark money group to plant these same smears was roundly dismissed by Senate Ethics," Whitehouse spokesperson Stephen DeLeo told Fox News Digital in a statement. "The billionaires and Supreme Court capture operatives behind FACT would like to try to stop Senator Whitehouse from shining a light on what they’ve done to deprive regular people of a fair shake before the Court. But false accusations from far-right special interests and billionaires will not impede the Senator’s pursuit of an accountable, ethical government that responds to Americans’ needs."
more
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/flashback-dem-senator-embroiled-conflict-interest-row-targeted-scotus-ethics-crusade
