The sordid, weird world of Sen. John Ensign

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

In an earlier post about Governor Mark Sanford (R-SC), I briefly mentioned Sen. John Ensign (R-NV). I stated that "If the investigation into the money trail of hush money and your allegations of extortion pan out, you will soon be submitting your resignation from the U.S. Senate."

Well, the investigation into the money trail of hush money and the extortion and possible blackmail of a sitting U.S. Senator are panning out. This story is no longer about sex per se. The only question now is when Sen. Ensign will be compelled to resign from office, or be removed.

Most of you are already familiar with the sordid details that the alleged "victim" of this consensual sexual affair, Cynthia Hampton, saw her salary doubled during the time of their liason, and her 19 year old son was hired by the RNC as a policy analyst. Doug Hampton, who was a senior aide on Sen. Ensign's staff, received a new job arranged for him by Sen. Ensign who hooked him up with a major campaign contributor. This all appears bad enough.

But now we learn of additional payments that begin to look very much like extortion or blackmail of a sitting U.S. Senator. Time for the FBI to investigate. Joe Sudbay at Americablog reports GOP Senator Ensign allegedly paid mistress $25,000. Was it federal taxpayer money?

[T]he husband of Ensign's former mistress, Doug Hampton, appeared on Las Vegas TV to provide additional details about the affair and its aftermath. Remember, Doug Hampton and his wife, Cynthia (the mistress), both worked for Ensign. Mrs. Hampton was on the campaign staff. Mr. Hampton was on the Senate staff.

According to Mr. Hampton, his wife was paid $25,000 when she left her job (and Ensign.) Also, we learn that Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK and widely known as Dr. No) served as Ensign's marriage counselor:

Doug Hampton spoke publicly for the first time today about the affair his wife had with Sen. John Ensign, saying the Nevada Republican continued his pursuit even after intermediaries tried to get him to stop.

Hampton said that Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and others urged him to end the affair and help the Hamptons pay off their home and move to Colorado. But Ensign was so infatuated that he continued, Hampton said.

John Hart, Coburn's communications director, released a statement Wednesday afternoon saying Ensign should have ended the affair.

"Dr. Coburn did everything he could to encourage Senator Ensign to end his affair and to persuade Senator Ensign to repair the damage he had caused to his own marriage and the Hampton’s marriage," according to the statement. "Had Senator Ensign followed Dr. Coburn’s advice, this episode would have ended, and been made public, long ago."

Hampton’s comments came during an exclusive two-part interview with Sun columnist Jon Ralston, to air tonight at 5:30 p.m. and tomorrow on “Face to Face with Jon Ralston.”

“In response to today’s television interview, Senator Ensign said Doug Hampton was consistently inaccurate in his statements,” Ensign spokesman Tory Mazzola said in a statement.

Cynthia Hampton was the treasurer of Ensign’s political action committee and re-election campaign, while Doug Hampton served as a senior aide on Ensign’s Senate staff.

Hampton said Ensign paid the woman more than $25,000 in severance when she stopped working for the senator.

Wait, so you mean he may have used federal money to pay off his mistress?

On Thursday there was this jaw-dropping revelation: Sen. Ensign asked his parents – his parents – to make a series of payments to Cynthia and Doug Hampton and their two children totalling some $96,000. How shameless is this guy? "Um, mom, dad, I got caught dipping my pen in the company ink and now I'm going to need some cash to make this go away. It can't be traceable back to me, you know? Can you spare about a hundred grand in $12,000 installments for hush money?" Un-freakin-believable! Most people would die from the embarrassment of admitting to marital infedility to their parents. But then to ask them for hush money? Shameless.

Jed Lewison at Daily Kos reports Ensign family gave $100k to mistress's family

John Ensign's parents paid his mistress's family $100K in what looks an awful lot like hush money:

Sen. John Ensign's attorney acknowledged Thursday that the Nevada Republican's parents paid nearly $100,000 to the family of his mistress after she and her husband left his staff in April 2008.

In a statement from Paul Coggins, Ensign's attorney, said that the senator gave Doug Hampton, Cindy Hampton and their two children gifts worth $96,000 and that "each gift was limited to $12,000."

"The payments were made as gifts, accepted as gifts and complied with tax rules governing gifts," Coggins said.

Whether or not the gifts were legal, Ensign stood to benefit by having his parents make them because it kept his tax records clean in the event that he ever had to disclose them (for example, in a presidential campaign).

But wait, there's more! (my tribute to Billy Mays). This story takes even more bizarre twists and turns than a John Grisham novel. Truth really is stranger than fiction.

The "hush money" plan involves another U.S. Senator, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) who knew about the affair and claims to have acted as a "marriage counselor" to Sen. Ensign. Zachary Roth at TPM Muckraker reports Hampton: Religious Buddies Drove Ensign To FedEx To Mail Letter To Cindy

[Doug] Hampton told his interviewer, Jon Ralston, that after discovering that Ensign was sleeping with Cindy Hampton — and rightly not trusting the senator's assurances that the affair was over — Doug Hampton went to a group of men associated with the C Street Christian fellowship to which Ensign belonged, and asked them to "confront" Ensign.

Already we're in weird territory here: couldn't Hampton have just kept this between himself, his wife, and the Ensigns? Why bring in these outsiders? Hampton's determination to avoid recognizing that his wife had any agency in the affair, and his decision to address it in an outside men-only forum, goes beyond self-delusion and into a kind of misogyny. But set that aside because things get weirder…

Hampton went on to name four of the men who confronted Ensign: Tim Coe, David Coe, Marty Sherman, and Sen. Tom Coburn. The Coes are the sons of Doug Coe, the influential pastor and longtime leader of The Family, the secretive Christian group with which the C Street fellowship is affiliated. Sherman also has been involved with the Family. "They have a good heart," Hampton said of the men. (He did not address the question of how the men survive while sharing a crucial bodily organ.)

At that confrontation, according to Hampton, Coburn and the other men urged Ensign — the son of a multimillionaire casino magnate — to pay for the Hamptons' home and for a move to Colorado. But as Hampton described it, they also insisted that Ensign write a letter to his girlfriend — later obtained by the Las Vegas Sun — breaking things off and expressing remorse. Then, says Hampton, two of the men, Tim Coe and Sherman, actually drove Ensign to a FedEx office, apparently to make sure he sent the letter.

And yet, Hampton said that soon after ditching his detail of religious protectors, Ensign called Cindy to warn her that the letter was coming and that she should disregard it. Twenty-four hours after sending the letter, said Hampton, Ensign was with Cindy in Las Vegas.

* * *

And in case that doesn't make Ensign out to be pathetic enough, there's a capper: after all this, when it finally came time to cover his tracks and get the Hamptons out of his office, he couldn't find it in him to tell Cindy himself — he needed his religious buddies even for that. "Cindy ultimately was asked to leave basically by The Family," Doug Hampton told Ralston.

Zachary Roth updates his report UPDATED: Coburn Not Denying Claim That He Urged Ensign To Pay "Restitution" To Girlfriend's Family

[Doug Hampton] told his interviewer, Jon Ralston, that in February 2008, he went to a group of men associated with C Street, the Christian fellowship that has a house on Capitol Hill, and asked them to confront Ensign.

Said Hampton: "So I confront him with these men, and Tom Coburn." (Coburn has also been associated with the C Street fellowship, and his role in the Ensign confrontation was mentioned in Hampton's letter to Fox News, which came out last month.)

Asked by Ralston about the charge from the Ensign camp that Hampton had tried to extort him, Hampton continued:

The first money that was presented was from these men that confronted John. These men were the ones that said, 'what we need to do is get Doug Hampton's home paid for, and we need to get Doug Hampton some money, and we need to get his family to Colorado.

Hampton added:

The money and all those things came from this group initiating, initially, what they believed it was gonna take to take care of this.

Asked by Ralston whether he or his lawyer asked Ensign for money, Hampton replied:

Our attorneys did talk…because Sen Tom Coburn asked and was involved in these negotiations out of good will and good faith.

When Ralston asked what those negotiations were for, Hampton replied: "The belief from Tom Coburn and many that some restitution needs to take place here." He added, a bit later: "They just thought this was gonna be best for both of our lives."

Ralston then went over things one last time, to make sure there was no mistake:

Tom Coburn, a US senator, told John Ensign, listen you gotta deal with this, make these folks whole, let them get out of your life, and let's move on. Isn't that exactly what happened?

Replied Hampton: "Absolutely."

Sen. Coburn has now given what appears to be a categorical denial that he urged Ensign to pay restitution to the Hamptons.

"Restitution." Is that the polite word for it now days? This Doug Hampton almost sounds as if he was pimping his wife. Or maybe he sees himself as Woody Harrelson's character in Indecent Proposal. He certainly is clueless that he is going to be investigated for extortion and/or blackmail of a U.S. Senator.

For his part, Sen. Coburn is asserting both the doctor-patient (he is a medical doctor) and minister-penitent privilege in refusing to speak about his conversations with Sen. Ensign. Daily Kos "I was counseling him as a physician and as an ordained deacon. … That is privileged communication that I will never reveal to anyone. Not to the Ethics Committee, not to a court of law, not to anybody," Coburn said.

First of all, Doctor Coburn is an OB/GYN doctor, so it strains credulity to believe that Sen. Ensign was seeking any medical treatment from Sen. Coburn. Secondly, Sen. Coburn is only a Deacon in his church. I am not aware of any church in which a mere Deacon is authorized to hear confessions, so the minister-penitent privilege does not apply. Finally, and most importantly, the privilege belongs to the person who made the statements – Sen. Ensign – and he may waive the privilege and permit his alleged "doctor" or "minister" to testify about his conversations. Sen. Coburn could not refuse to testify under this circumstance, he could be charged with obstruction of justice. So climb down off your high horse, senator.

The part of this story that is going to get glossed over by the mainstream media is the intersection of this story with the secretive Christianist cult "The Family" and the C Street Christian Fellowship with which it is affiliated.

For the uninitiated, The Family is a variant of Calvinism, only on steroids. Jeff Sharlet, a contributing editor at Harper‘s Magazine and the author of “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power,” was a guest on the Rachel Maddow Show Thursday night. 'The Rachel Maddow Show' for Thursday, July 9. Here is how he describes this secretive Christianist cult:

MADDOW: When I — when I read your book, “The Family,” when it first came out in hardback, Jeff, I — my notes on, I write notes in the fly leaf about I‘m thinking about it. And my notes about it, I went back and looked for that. It was essentially to promote — its role in promoting American power worldwide, unfettered capitalism, no unions, no programs to help poor people — all with this idea that godly, powerful rich men should get as many resources as possible personally and they should just privately help everyone else. That was the impression that I was left with.

Was I close?

SHARLET: That‘s dead on the money. The Family — again, it‘s the oldest Christian conservative organization in Washington. And it goes back 70 years when the founder believed that God gave him a new revelation, saying that Christianity had gotten it wrong for 2000 years, and that what most people think of as Christianity is being about, you know, helping the weak and the poor and the meek and the down and out.

He believed God came to him one night in April of 1935 and said, what Christianity should really be about is building more power for the already powerful and that these powerful men who are chosen by God can then — if they want to dispense blessings to the rest of us, through a kind of trickle down fundamentalism.

And the C Street Christian Fellowship?

MADDOW: What is C Street? I know it‘s a house on C Street in Washington. How is it part of the Family?

SHARLET: Well, the C Street house is actually — it‘s a former convent. Now, it‘s registered as a church. And it‘s run by the Family, and used by them to provide housing for six to eight congressmen at any given time and to provide spiritual counsel to these congressmen — which all sounds fine so far.

What makes it a little bit different than other Christian conservative organizations — two things. You said that it‘s secretive. Indeed, the leader of the group describes it, he says, “The more invisible you can make your organization, the more influence it will have.”

And the other thing is the nature of the influence they want to have. I got to sit in on a spiritual counseling session between the leader of the Family and Congressman Todd Tiahrt on the C Street house. I actually, met Senator Ensign there.

As the leader of the family was counseling Congressman Tiahrt, who had this very standard issue, bill of issues related to the Christian right, and he said, you‘ve got to have a bigger vision of what we‘re talking about here. He described — he called it “Jesus plus nothing.” And he said it‘s sort of a totalitarian idea of Christianity and he gave his examples of men who he believed, understood the way power should wielded. He actually gave his examples, Hitler, Pol Pot, Osama bin Laden and Lenin.

So when Republicans run for office proclaiming they are good Christians and stand for family values, you really have to dig deeper and ask them "of what Christian church are you a member?" and "to what 'The Family' values do you subscribe?" Of course, these guys would lie to you to protect the secretiveness of The Family. Read Jeff Sharlet's book.

Here is the video segment. Jeff Sharlet interview begins at 3:23.

UPDATE: Part II of this report aired on Friday's Rachel Maddow Show with an interview of Jeff Sharlet. The transcript will be up next week. Here is the video segment. This represents one of the reasons why the Founding Fathers so wisely believed in separation of church and state. The Family believes in a theocratic totalitarian state. And their members are currently serving as members of Congress.