Illicit Sex and Illegal Lobbying Are All In a Day's Work For Christian Right's Sen. Ensign

Posted by Adele Stan, AlterNet at 7:38 AM on October 2, 2009.

The John Ensign story just gets creepier and creepier. Earlier this year, we learned that the Republican senator from Nevada had had an affair with a campaign staffer who is married to a man who was then a member of Ensign's senate office staff. Are ya with me so far?

Then we learned that Ensign's parents had written that couple -- the woman with whom he had been committing adultery and her husband -- a very large check, a $96,000 "gift", Ensign said, for the couple and two of their three children.

Word then leaked out that Ensign belonged to the C Street cabal, a mostly male, nominally Christian group of people in high places who believe themselves exempt from the normal rules of ethical conduct, on account of their anointment by God. Of course, they don't call themselves a cabal; they call themselves "The Family" or "The Fellowship".(See Jeff Sharlet's masterful book, The Family.) Serving as Ensign's confidant and confessor was Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., another Family member.

Now comes word, through some masterful reporting by New York Times journalists Eric Lichtblau and Eric Lipton of even more hanky-panky than was previously revealed.

When Doug Hampton, the cuckholded husband, first explored the possibility of a "gift" that would balm his wounded soul, he had a nice chat with Coburn, who told Hampton that the $8 million he was looking for was just not going to happen. When Hampton revised his request to $2 million, Coburn took the request back to Ensign.

The deal the Hamptons ultimately got, it seems, was the $96,000 and a special new job for Doug Hampton. Ensign set Hampton up as a lobbyist, finding him clients on whose behalf Hampton then lobbied Ensign's office, in apparent violation of federal law. Then Ensign did favors for those clients, intervening on behalf of NV Energy with the U.S. Department of the Interior, and making a call to the Department of Transportation, at Hampton's request, on behalf of Allegiant Air, which is currently under investigation for tacking a deceptively described fee onto tickets it sells online.

The Times story offers a treasure trove of information, including PDFs of original documents -- notes and letters by the participants, as well as documentation of the payment to Hampton.

Why Ensign is still in the Senate -- he's among those gumming up the health-care works on the Finance Committee -- remains a mystery. One would think that the leadership of God's Own Party would want to purge itself of an anointee, however entitled, who has so soiled its image.

Tagged as: the family, john ensign, c street, tom coburn, ensign affair, sen. tom coburn, ensign payoff

Adele M. Stan is AlterNet's Washington bureau chief.