Fox News Denies Network Forced Ensign to Admit Adultery

Fox New is denying claims that Doug Hampton — whose wife Cynthia is the other woman in Senator John Ensign's sex scandal — sent the network a letter pleading for help exposing the affair five days before the Senator announced it in a press conference and that Ensign came forward with the affair because he knew Fox was working on the story.

The Las Vegas Sun reported Friday that Hampton sent Fox News' Megyn Kelly a two-page, single-spaced letter dated June 11 detailing the affair and asking for help in exposing the Senator. The Senator came forward with the affair on June 16 — in part, a spokesman told the Sun, because his office had learned that Hampton approached "a major television news channel."

"We learned of this fact before the news conference," the spokesman told the Sun.

Tom Lowell, senior producer of "America's Newsroom," hosted by Kelly and Bill Hemmer, says no one at Fox News ever received a printed letter, but that a booker on the show received an email from Hampton with the letter attached on June 15 — the day before the Senator's press conference.

"We never received any letter from Mr. Hampton," Lowell told the Huffington Post.