The San Antonio Ethics Review Board (ERB) found that District 10 Councilmember Marc Whyte abused his power and violated city ethics rules when he intervened in a potential child abuse incident in April.
The ERB voted 6-1 to find that Marc Whyte violated three sections of the ethics code dealing with an official’s wrongful use of their position to impede private interests, wrongful use of the prestige of their office to imply they can improperly influence city action, and wrongful use of city personnel or resources for private purposes.
It was the first time in 12 years that anyone had come before the ERB for such a hearing.
The ERB dismissed a fourth accusation that Marc Whyte had wrongfully acted in his personal economic interest.
Whyte was found in violation of sections 2-44a, 2-47c, and 2-49 of the city’s ethics code.
The ERB sanctions will be a letter of reprimand on Whyte’s permanent personnel record and a referral to ethics training, the most severe sanctions the body can impose.
After the hearing, Whyte said he didn’t believe the letter of the ethics code was followed in the ERB’s decision.
“Obviously I strongly disagree with those findings on those couple of matters,” he said. “If you look at the ethics review code, those provisions state that an elected official is not allowed to do something that is not lawfully allowed to be done by someone who’s not elected, and there is nothing that I did on the night in question that isn’t lawfully able to be done by any other citizen of San Antonio.”
The findings of ethics violations stem from a complaint from San Antonio attorney Martin Phipps over an April incident in which he claimed Whyte used his position to send law enforcement officers to his home to have his children taken away from him.
“When councilmen have a reasonable suspicion because they don’t like you, they can get the sheriff to send somebody over to your house,” Phipps said at the hearing.
Whyte is a former law student and employee of Phipps.
Ross Fischer, third-party counsel hired by the City of San Antonio to advise the ERB, laid out the timeline of events that occurred the night of April 26.
At 8:19 p.m., SAPD dispatch answered a 911 call from Jessica Joyner, Phipps' ex-wife, and by 8:27 p.m. the first SAPD unit was on scene at Phipps’ home. Joyner called SAPD after receiving texts from her 13-year-old daughter, who was staying with Phipps, that Phipps had screamed at her and grabbed her, and that she was scared.
Then at 8:30 p.m., Joyner shared the messages from her daughter with Lorien Whyte, Marc Whyte’s wife, who had represented Joyner in a 2023 appellate case related to a child custody battle between Phipps and Joyner. She also shared that she had called the police.
Lorien Whyte then shared those messages with her husband at 8:50 p.m. She said in a sworn affidavit that Joyner never asked her to tell Marc Whyte or get him involved in any way.
In Lorien Whyte’s text message to the councilmember, she told him that “we may need to get police chief involved” — referring to SAPD Police Chief William McManus — because Phipps’ home had locked gates that she said were preventing officers from getting into the home.
Three minutes after receiving the texts, Marc Whyte attempted unsuccessfully to call McManus and texted him the screenshot of messages between Joyner and her daughter, asking him, “Can you call me?”
When McManus did not immediately respond — he didn’t respond for another hour — Marc Whyte went to District 8 Councilmember Manny Peláez with the text messages. Both men were at a public event in King William District just minutes from Phipps’ home.
Peláez, who testified at the ERB hearing, said he was extremely concerned by the messages and told Marc Whyte they should speak to Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar, who was nearby.
Peláez is also a former law student and employee of Phipps.
At 9:00 p.m., Peláez and Marc Whyte showed Salazar the messages, and he waved down a nearby off-duty sheriff’s deputy working private security at the event, and he asked him to go check out the house.
The deputy said he had already been to the scene where SAPD were present, but after Marc Whyte’s request that he go back and Salazar’s direction to do so, he returned to the scene at 9:06 p.m.
At around 9:30 p.m., Marc Whyte texted Joyner that “we are on this” and unsuccessfully attempted to reach SAPD Deputy Chief Jesse Salame by phone and text.
Phipps said this was all an effort to change the outcome of the child custody case Lorien Whyte was involved with as an appellate attorney in 2023.
“They’re trying to get a result that they couldn’t get otherwise,” Phipps said. “And if it wasn’t for Detective Romo and the other two [SAPD] officers that came, I don’t know what would have happened.”
In Phipps’ statements at the hearing, he inaccurately accused Marc Whyte of reaching out to City Manager Erik Walsh and Deputy City Manager María Villagómez, who oversees SAPD, about the situation. But it was actually Peláez who contacted the two officials — he said on Wednesday that he regularly takes such action whenever he’s involved with anything concerning SAPD.
SAPD officers ultimately cleared the scene without making any arrests or removing any children from Phipps’ home.
After the scene was cleared and McManus texted Marc Whyte informing him, Whyte responded that he couldn’t believe officers had left. He shared his concern for what might happen to the girl.
Marc Whyte said he took the actions he did because he was fearful for the child’s safety and didn’t know if the SAPD was aware of how serious the situation was, and because he didn’t have any information on whether the child was okay.
Secondarily, he said the Texas code legally requires anyone who suspects child abuse to report it, though he admitted that wasn’t on his mind on the night in question.
The decision over whether Marc Whyte violated the city’s ethics code turned on whether the actions he took — reaching out to McManus on his personal cell, expressing disbelief to him that officers had left the scene, reaching out to Salame, and sending a message to Joyner that he was “on this” — were intended to impede private interests, were an improper use of his elected prestige, or were a use of city personnel or resources that were not lawfully available to regular residents.
Because Salazar and the sheriff’s deputy work for the county, rather than the city, they could not be applied to the potential misuse of city personnel or resources.
Marc Whyte was peppered with repeated questions about why he took so much action after he already knew police were on scene. He responded that he wanted to ensure officers knew how serious the problem was because of what the level of danger for Phipps may have been.
“What you learn when you get involved [with Child Advocates of San Antonio] and you hear those terrible stories, is that you can’t be too careful, and time is sometimes of the essence, and I wanted to act as quickly as I could,” he said.
He added that because he was so close to Phipps’ home, doing something like bringing the issue to Salazar’s attention would be much faster than making another 911 call himself.
But Phipps said Whyte and Peláez’s efforts were intended to attack him and for Whyte to gain personally on behalf of his wife, who Phipps claimed was still working for Joyner.
“He took actions that he knew was likely to affect his wife’s economic interest,” Phipps said. “I do not know their financial arrangement, if it was contingency or hourly, but clearly they had lost.”
Marc Whyte said his wife had not represented Joyner since August 2023, and both Lorien Whyte and Joyner testified to that in their sworn statements.
Marc Whyte has the opportunity to appeal the ruling to a state district court, but he said he wasn’t sure if he wanted to drag out the process any further. He said if he could go back, he wouldn’t change anything.
“I would act again just as I did,” he said. “A little girl was crying out for help, and so, you know, I did what I think any citizen of San Antonio would do, which is try to get her the help as quickly as possible.”
Phipps left the hearing room quickly after the decision was read, but a spokesperson sent over a written statement.
"My goal was to make sure that no other families would be traumatized by these two men in the same way, and with the ER's help, I think we accomplished that goal," Phipps said in the statement. "Based on the post judgment statements, the two councilmen still do not accept responsibility and show zero remorse, so we're going to take a few days before determining next steps."
The spokesperson did not clarify what Phipps meant about what possible next steps could be.
The ERB’s District 1 representative Fred Campbell voted against every finding that Whyte violated the ethics codes, including the sanctions. The District 8 and District 10 ERB representatives were recused from the hearing.
The first-term councilmember Marc Whyte now finds himself with an upcoming DWI trial over an arrest in December where a blood test showed he was above the .08 legal blood alcohol level and a finding that he violated three separate sections of the city’s ethics code.
