Wall Street Journal Calls for Ethics Investigation Into Sen. Whitehouse Relationship with RI Company
Saturday, July 04, 2020
A Wall Street Journal editorial is calling for the U.S. States Senate Ethics Committee to investigate the relationship between U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Rhode Island-based Utilidata.
The WSJ outlines what they allege was a quid pro quo relationship between Whitehouse intervening on behalf of the company and that his intervention was timed to campaign donations from senior officers of the company.
Whitehouse’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the Wall Street Journal’s claims.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTJosh Brumberger, now the CEO of Utilidata, referred questions to the company’s spokesperson. Brumberger was a former policy staffer to then-General Treasurer and now-Governor Gina Raimondo. She named Brumberger to RIPTA's board in 2016.
Utilidata’s spokeswoman Theresa Gilbert told GoLocal in an email, “Utilidata’s response is that the allegation is completely false.”
The then-CEO of Utilidata, Scott DePasquale, now serves as President & CEO, Financial Systemic Analysis & Resilience Center in Washington, D.C.
The Wall Street Journal writes, “Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse makes a habit of accusing his opponents of corruption. So let’s take a look at an example of the Senator’s political mediation that Mr. Whitehouse would surely denounce if the facts involved someone he disliked. The details come courtesy of Americans for Public Trust, a nonprofit that has examined the Senator’s relationship with Utilidata, Inc., a Providence-based green energy company. In January 2014, Mr. Whitehouse hosted Utilidata’s then CEO, Scott DePasquale, as his guest at President Obama’s State of the Union Address. He lauded Mr. DePasquale as a 'RI energy efficiency leader' in a press release."
“In 2015, according to Federal Election Commission records, Mr. DePasquale and two other top Utilidata executives, Carl J. Meiser and Josh Brumberger, gave $3,000 combined to the Whitehouse for Senate campaign… that as the federal government prepared “to aggressively ramp up its funding of clean-energy research to help address climate change,” Mr. Whitehouse co-hosted a roundtable with then-Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz to discuss clean energy. Utilidata’s Mr. Brumberger was among the participants.”
The nation's leading business newspaper writes:
Mr. Brumberger mentioned that “fifty people in Providence, Rhode Island, worked together for three months on a grant application to DOE to explore security and technology being discussed in the roundtable,” according to a Department of Energy report on “exploring regional opportunities in the U.S. for clean energy technology innovation” that was issued in October 2016.
Americans for Public Trust made a freedom of information request to the Department of Energy. The records it received show that on April 26, 2016, Mr. Whitehouse wrote to thank Mr. Moniz for his “participation in the clean technology roundtable with Rhode Island Stakeholders.”
And in April 28, 2016, correspondence, according to a DOE summary released to Americans for Public Trust, Mr. Whitehouse wrote “in support of Utilidata, Inc’s application to the United States Department of Energy Cybersecurity for Energy Delivery Systems Grant Program.”
Mr. DePasquale, who no longer works at Utilidata, didn’t respond to our inquiry. Theresa Gilbert, a spokeswoman for Utilidata, declined to elaborate on the contract the company was seeking or its interactions with Mr. Whitehouse. She added that the company “never received any grant or funding from the Department of Energy” and she says claims of a quid pro quo are “false.”
Mr. Whitehouse declined to explain his intervention for Utilidata. His press secretary said in an email that “we assume that your wildly off-base request is something you were put up to by the polluters and dark-money political forces Senator Whitehouse routinely calls out, and for whom you routinely flack, and the Senator declines to get drawn into their little scheme.” She did not dispute the facts.
Why does this matter? Well, the Senate Ethics Manual puts the issue this way: “Because Senators occupy a position of public trust, every Senator always must endeavor to avoid the appearance that the Senator, the Senate, or the governmental process may be influenced by campaign contributions or other benefits provided by those with significant legislative or governmental interests.”
Americans for Public Trust says Mr. Whitehouse “appears to have done just that” in his dealings with Utilidata.
Former Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell was driven from office and convicted of a crime for doing favors for a political donor before the Supreme Court overturned his conviction. New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez was indicted for lobbying the Department of Health and Human Services on behalf of a campaign donor, though prosecutors dropped the charges after the High Court’s McDonnell ruling that raised the standard for quid-pro-quo corruption.
Meanwhile, Mr. Whitehouse accuses companies, judges and others of corruption on an almost daily basis without any evidence. He claims the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts has a “stunning record of partisan judicial activism,” which he says is bought and paid for by “dark money” donors.
This month he smeared federal appellate Judge Neomi Rao for her opinion supporting Michael Flynn’s request for a writ of mandamus to dismiss his case: “‘Judge’ Rao delivers the coverup she was put on the court for.” Never mind that her opinion was joined by Judge Karen Henderson. Was she part of a coverup too?
Mr. Whitehouse’s smears are based on less evidence than the facts of his favors for Utilidata and the contributions the company’s executives delivered to his campaign. The Senate Ethics Committee should open an investigation.
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