Sen. John Ensign just wanted to keep the whole affair quiet. He gave thousands of dollars to his mistress to book hotels for their clandestine encounters. He bought cheap cellphones to communicate with her. He considered buying her Las Vegas home and tried to help her aggrieved husband’s lobbying career to make the whole matter go away.
But his efforts to sweep the affair under the rug eventually backfired, unraveling a once-promising Senate career that ended with an embarrassing resignation last month and new allegations that he broke a series of federal laws with his coverup.
It all spilled out on the Senate floor Thursday when the Select Committee on Ethics released in stark detail a series of damaging allegations, in the most extensive ethics investigation of a senator in nearly two decades.
The 68-page report was not only explosive in its conclusions — it alleges Ensign violated Federal Election Commission rules and campaign finance law and obstructed the Ethics Committee investigation. It was salacious in detail, alleging an almost obsessive pursuit by Ensign of Cindy Hampton, a former aide, and his attempts to pay off Hampton’s family as part of what the ethics panel called a “web of deceit.”
The committee referred the findings to the Justice Department and the FEC to investigate the possible violations.
“These findings are so disturbing … that had Sen. Ensign not resigned and had we been able to proceed to that adjudication, that it would have been substantial enough to warrant the consideration of expulsion,” Ethics Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said on the Senate floor.
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