Sen. Tom Coburn knew more than a year ago that his Republican colleague John Ensign was having an affair with a staffer – and he reportedly urged Ensign to end the relationship and pay a substantial sum of money to the staffer and her husband.
Doug Hampton – the husband of Ensign’s mistress – told Las Vegas Sun columnist Jon Ralston Wednesday that Coburn and others had urged Ensign to give the couple “millions of dollars” so that they could pay off their mortgage and move away from Ensign’s hometown of Las Vegas. Asked about that allegation Wednesday, Coburn’s office confirmed that the he knew about Ensign’s affair and had urged him to end it.
“Dr. Coburn did everything he could to encourage Sen. Ensign to end his affair and to persuade Sen. Ensign to repair the damage he had caused to his own marriage and the Hampton’s marriage,” Coburn’s office said in a remarkable public rebuke of his friend and fellow Christian conservative. “Had Sen. Ensign followed Dr. Coburn’s advice, this episode would have ended, and been made public, long ago.”
Sources familiar with the facts say that Hampton and Coburn confronted Ensign in February 2008 at a Christian fellowship home on Capitol Hill where Ensign, Coburn and several other lawmakers live.
A source familiar with the incident said that, in urging Ensign to pay money to the couple, Coburn hoped that Ensign would go public with the affair. Coburn intended the money as “an expression of restitution and not in any way ‘hush money,’” the source said.
The source said that Coburn arranged the February 2008 confrontation with Ensign – and that Ensign told him afterward that he had ended the affair. In fact, Ensign’s office has acknowledged that the relationship continued until August 2008.
For the GOP, the new developments are hardly helpful. Ensign’s admission of an affair last month was followed quickly by news that another Republican, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, had been cheating on his wife with a woman in Argentina. Just as that scandal faded from the headlines, the Ensign saga returns – and this time, a second Republican senator is implicated in it.
Hampton told Ralston that Ensign subsequently gave $25,000 to his wife, former Ensign campaign treasurer Cindy Hampton, as severance pay for her political work. Both Hamptons were on Ensign’s payroll from Dec. 2006 until April 2008.
Hampton also supplied Ralston with a copy of what he said was a handwritten letter from Ensign to Cindy Hampton, dated February 2008, in which Ensign suggested that he wanted to end the affair.
“This is the most important letter I’ve ever written,” Ensign wrote. “What I did with you was wrong. I was completely self-centered + only thinking of myself. I used you for my own pleasure, not letting thoughts of you, Doug
come into my mind...I betrayed everything I believed in and lied to myself over + over. I justified my actions because I blamed my wife.”
Ensign refused to comment on the new revelations Wednesday, telling POLITICO: “See what we said before.”
Ensign’s office has said previously that he admitted the affair publicly last month because the Hamptons were demanding “millions of dollars” from him in exchange for their silence.
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Hmmm...SO Coburn said give them millions to allow them to move away and then Ensign suggests they were asking for Millions to keep things quiet?????
There may ultimately be nothing to this. But reporters are going to start poking at this thing for the next month or two. They may lose Ensign yet. Coburn has got some splaining to do but he is probably uber-safe being from Oklahoma.
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