The U.S. House Committee on Ethics announced Friday that the chairman of another committee gave his lobbyist wife inappropriate access to his staff and “special favors” in her lobbying efforts for animal rights, but declined to punish him.
The Committee published a report criticizing Kentucky Republican Rep. Ed Whitfield, but didn’t sanction him because he lacked the intent to violate House rules regarding lobbying. The report follows more than a multi-year long probe into Whitfield launched in 2013. The Committee found that Whitfield’s wife lobbied for multiple bills her husband supported or introduced regarding animal welfare. Whitfield maintains that he sponsored the legislation of his own volition.
Whitfield’s wife was listed as a paid lobbyist for the Humane Society Legislative Fund [HSLF] starting in 2011 but was linked to the group for several years prior.
“Representative Whitfield’s staff granted Ms. Harriman unique access to the office, and treated her in a deferential matter, because she was the Member’s spouse,” the committee wrote in its report. “When she registered to lobby for HSLF, and later joined HSLF as a paid lobbyist, her access to Representative Whitfield’s staff, and the staffs treatment of her, should have changed accordingly. But by all accounts, nothing changed.”
Whitfield has been in office since 1995 and was the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power. The congressman pledged in September to retire at the end of this year.
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