Waters' husband wanders too close for comfort
Sidney Williams canât seem to stay out of the congressional spotlight. The former NFL player and U.S. ambassador, who is married to Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), has been seen several times on and around the House floor since the beginning of the year, according to several reporters who were there. A doorkeeper told him Monday that he could not enter the speakerâs lobby. Story Continued Below Congressional spouses do not have floor privileges and are not allowed on the House floor, in the cloakrooms or in the speakerâs lobby. Williams served as an ambassador to the Bahamas during the Clinton administration. Waters spokesman Jermaine House said in a statement that Williams âhas not walked onto the House Floor and has not been asked to leave.â âAnd regarding his alleged attempt to enter the Speakerâs lobby, Congresswoman Watersâ husband has mistakenly ventured into the lobby searching for the bathroom, at which point, he was directed to go a different way,â House said. âNevertheless, that was no attempt to subvert any rules; it was merely a mistake that dozens of staffers and visitors commit for any myriad of innocuous reasons.â The bathroom off the speakerâs lobby is for lawmakers only and is not open to the public. This isnât the first time Williams has gotten crosswise with Congress. Waters was under investigation for nearly three years over whether she used her position on the House Financial Services Committee to get officials to meet with OneUnited Bank and also help deliver $12 million in funds from the Troubled Asset Relief Program to the bank. Her husband had been a director at the bank and held hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock in the company, and several of the bankâs executives had cut campaign checks to her. In 2012, the House Ethics Committee cleared Waters of any wrongdoing after a hugely controversial probe.