source:
New York Times
Report Urges U.S. to Consider Charging Ensign
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<NYT_TEXT><NYT_CORRECTION_TOP></NYT_CORRECTION_TOP>WASHINGTON — Senator
John Ensign’s top aide warned him in 2008 that his office might be breaking the law by helping a former staff member build up a lobbying business. The senator let out a long groan, then said they should help the former employee anyway, according to a remarkably detailed Senate report that urged the government to consider criminal charges against Mr. Ensign.
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John Ensign, a Nevada Republican who resigned from the Senate, could have faced expulsion, Senator Barbara Boxer said.
The report issued Thursday, a result of the most extensive Senate ethics investigation in at least two decades, describes the actions inside the senator’s office as he sought to manage the fallout from an affair with the wife of one of his former senior aides.
Perhaps seeking to cover up the wrongdoing, staff members deleted incriminating e-mails, and the senator himself may have lied under oath to thwart a separate investigation by the Federal Election Commission, according to the bipartisan report.
Mr. Ensign’s actions were so brazen and improper that had he not resigned last week he might have been the first senator expelled in nearly 150 years, said Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who is the Ethics Committee chairwoman.
“This Ensign case was a sad chapter for the Senate,” Ms. Boxer said, “but a far sadder chapter for those whose lives were affected and destroyed by his actions.”
The Senate Ethics Committee took the unusual step of releasing the results of its investigation into Mr. Ensign, even though it no longer has the power to punish him.
The report cited evidence that Mr. Ensign, a Republican of Nevada, conspired to help Douglas Hampton, his former aide, violate federal law by knowingly allowing him to lobby Mr. Ensign’s office despite a one-year lobbying ban. Mr. Ensign had an affair with Mr. Hampton’s wife, Cynthia Hampton, and the work as a lobbyist was meant to replace Mr. Hampton’s Senate salary, according to a plan the senator and Mr. Hampton devised.
Mr. Ensign may also have violated federal law by asking his parents to make what the Ethics Committee believes was an illegal $96,000 severance payment to the Hamptons, the report said.
Mr. Ensign’s lawyers released a statement Thursday disputing that he broke any laws or rules.
“Senator Ensign has admitted and apologized for his conduct and imposed on himself the highest sanction of resignation,” the statement said. “But this is not the same as agreeing that he did or intended to violate any laws or rules.”
The Ethics Committee examined more than 500,000 pages of documents, interviewed or deposed 72 witnesses, and issued nearly three dozen subpoenas. It also took the unusual step of bringing in a special counsel — Carol Elder Bruce, a former federal prosecutor — to help in the final stages of the 22-month inquiry.
Ms. Boxer and Senator Johnny Isakson, Republican of Georgia, the vice chairman, said the public release of the investigative findings and the referral to the Justice Department were necessary because Mr. Ensign’s actions and abuses reflected on the integrity of the Senate as a whole.
The investigation started after Mr. Ensign admitted in June 2009 that he had had an affair with Mrs. Hampton, even while her husband — once one of the senator’s best friends — was working alongside Mr. Ensign in Washington. At the time, Mr. Ensign described it as a personal failure that in no way affected his actions as a senator.
But The New York Times reported in late 2009 that Mr. Ensign had called at least a half-dozen prominent Nevada businessmen in the aftermath of the affair and urged them to hire Mr. Hampton as a consultant, an account confirmed Thursday by the ethics investigators.
While Mr. Ensign cast these phone calls and conversations as typical references for a staff member, the committee found that “Mr. Ensign used his office and staff to intimidate and cajole constituents into hiring Mr. Hampton.”
When one Las Vegas developer indicated that he was not interested, the senator had an aide pass word to the developer that he was officially “cut off” from contact with Mr. Ensign’s office and to “jack him up to high heaven” over his refusal.
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At least two companies, an airline and an electric utility, ultimately enlisted Mr. Hampton as a lobbyist. Within days, he contacted Mr. Ensign’s office for help.
One aide to Mr. Ensign is quoted as saying that he told the senator’s chief of staff, John Lopez, that “this is illegal activity, that it’s got to stop.” Mr. Lopez said he alerted Mr. Ensign, but was told to allow the contacts to continue, but make sure that Mr. Lopez was the only one whom Mr. Hampton spoke with.
For instance, Mr. Lopez told ethics investigators that he helped set up meetings for the senator with AllegiantAir, a client of Mr. Hampton’s, to try to resolve a regulatory dispute and improve the airline’s relations with federal aviation officials.
Mr. Lopez, who was given immunity to testify, said that “sitting here today, it’s painfully clear to me” that in acting as a go-between “we were being influenced to make a favorable outcome for Allegiant, there’s no question.”
The $96,000 payment may have been illegal because Mrs. Hampton was a former campaign aide, and it could be construed as an illegal campaign contribution by Mr. Ensign’s parents, funneled to her through the senator’s political accounts..
As Mr. Ensign prepared to admit to the public that he had had an affair, he drafted a statement in which he called this money a severance payment. But his lawyer had told him that “if that statement doesn’t get the attention of the U.S. attorney’s office, then nothing will,” according to the report.
So Mr. Ensign changed his public statement to describe it as a gift, the report says. He also allowed his staff to delete e-mails in his personal account where these early drafts had been stored. And then he provided false or misleading statements to the Federal Election Commission about the nature of the payment, the Ethics Committee said.
Both the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department had conducted their own investigations. The Ethics Committee urged Thursday that they be reopened.
Mr. Hampton is so far the only person to have been charged with wrongdoing, as he was arrested in March on charges of violating the one-year ban. He has pleaded not guilty, and his lawyer said yesterday that he had no comment.
Mr. Isakson told reporters that it would now be up to the Justice Department to decide whether criminal action was warranted. The Senate’s role, he said, “is over.”
Ms. Boxer said that despite the Justice Department’s earlier decision not to pursue charges against the senator, she was confident that prosecutors would examine closely the Ethics Committee’s findings of numerous potential violations of the law, including perjury and obstruction of justice.
“They will look at it,” she said. “They have to look at it.”
Mr. Ensign has already been replaced in the Senate by former Representative Dean Heller, a Republican who is now running for a six-year Senate term. Mr. Ensign’s resignation took place one day before he was scheduled to give sworn testimony in the investigation, which was nearly complete.
The move to leave the Senate voluntarily came as somewhat of a surprise, because when Mr. Ensign announced in March that he would not run for re-election, he insisted he would remain in office until his term expired at the end of 2012.
“Resigning would be admitting guilt,” he said, “and I did not do the things that they’re saying.”
