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The Sunlight Foundation uses cutting-edge technology and ideas to make government transparent and accountable. Underlying all of our efforts is a fundamental belief that increased transparency will improve the public's confidence in government
The Sunlight Foundation Blog
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NYT: E-mails Indicate Deepening of Scandal Surrounding Sen. John Ensign
While everyone’s been running around writing about former congresstickler Eric Massa, Eric Lichtblau and Eric Lipton of the New York Times spent some time digging further into a congressional sex scandal that actually involved some kind of corruption.
Previously undisclosed e-mail messages turned over to the F.B.I. and Senate ethics investigators provide new evidence about Senator John Ensign’s efforts to steer lobbying work to the embittered husband of his former mistress and could deepen his legal and political troubles.
Mr. Ensign, Republican of Nevada, suggested that a Las Vegas development firm hire the husband, Douglas Hampton, after it had sought the senator’s help on several energy projects in 2008, according to e-mail messages and interviews with company executives.
Investigators are looking at a number of issues including whether Ensign aided Hampton in circumventing the one-year lobbying ban for staffers-turned-lobbyists. Considering that the F.B.I. is involved in the investigation, it is unlikely that the Senate Ethics Committee will rule on ethics violations against Ensign before the criminal investigation is complete.
On a related aside: I’m with Matt Yglesias here. If you’re a journalist covering Congress, particularly ethical malfeasance in Congress, why not spend some time covering scandals like Ensign’s or Charlie Rangel or the PMA Group (and why the Ethics Committee spiked the investigation)? Do we really need more information on tickle-parties and Eric Massa’s deranged sense of self-worth?
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Sen. Ensign’s Untangling Web
Earlier this year, Sen. John Ensign, a rising star in the Republican party, revealed that he had had an affair with the wife of a top aide and close friend. Unlike the more famous affair revelation of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, Ensign’s affair wasn’t a tale of true love, but a story about corrupt politicians paying out hush money.The New York Times reports today that Ensign was deeply involved in providing money to his mistress and her husband. Ensign also helped the former aide and cuckolded husband, Douglas Hampton, get a job as a lobbyist and persuaded campaign contributors to hire Hampton. According to the Times, Ensign and Hampton then conspired to break lobbying laws that preclude a former staffer from lobbying their previous employer for one year. Ensign proceeded to connect Hampton to policy makers and work to fulfill the requests of Hampton’s clients.
Here’s the key piece — if one piece can be picked out — of the Times article:
Mr. Hampton said he and Mr. Ensign were aware of the lobbying restriction but chose to ignore it. He recounted how the senator helped him find clients and ticked off several steps Mr. Ensign took to assist them with their agendas in Washington, activities confirmed by federal officials and executives with the businesses.
“The only way the clients could get what John was essentially promising them — which was access — was if I still had a way to work with his office,” Mr. Hampton said. “And John knew that.”
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Mr. Hampton, who believed that Mr. Ensign’s help with his clients was crucial to his success, admitted he had ignored the restrictions. He said that it was November Inc.’s responsibility to register him as a lobbyist, but he added that he did not insist the company do so because it would have made obvious that he was making inappropriate contacts on Capitol Hill. As for violating the one-year ban, he said he did so at Mr. Ensign’s direction.This will, in all likelihood, lead to an ethics investigation, which could defer to a Justice Department investigation if one were to be launched. All in all, it looks pretty bad for the Nevada senator once considered a potential 2012 presidential contender.
Support from leadership already appears weak. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said the last thing Ensign might want to hear when asked about the Times article, “Sen. Ensign continues to serve.” (This is exactly what Robert Gibbs had to say about Climate Czar Van Jones before he was canned.)
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Repost: Ensign Tried to Stymie Ethics Committee, Calls Come for Committee to Investigate
In light of revelations in the New York Times regarding Sen. John Ensign’s apparent law and Senate rule breaking I am reposting the following blog post I put up earlier this year:
Since Wednesday, when the sex scandal engulfing Sen. John Ensign morphed into a public expense scandal, we’ve learned quite a few new details. Ensign was not blackmailed by Douglas Hampton. Cynthia Hampton’s salary at Ensign’s campaign doubled during the time of their affair. Ensign helped get jobs for Douglas Hampton and his son after they left Ensign’s Senate office and the NRSC, respectively.
What we still don’t know is whether Douglas Hampton was handsomely paid with taxpayer money when he left Ensign’s Senate office and whether this could constitute as hush money. There are beginning to be calls for a Senate Ethics Committee investigation with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asking for the committee to investigate and require disclosure from Ensign. This is just such an awesome idea and here’s why:
Back in 2007, around the time that Ensign was pursuing his close friend’s wife, Ensign was leading a crusade to derail a bill that would require electronic filing of Senate campaign finance reports. (Yes, this bill, the one Sunlight has been advocating for since 2006.) How was Ensign trying to derail the bill? By offering an amendment that would require any group filing an ethics complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee against a senator to disclose all of their donors (pretty much any lawyer will tell you that this is unconstitutional). This would, in effect, stymie the open process by which the Senate Ethics Committee accepts complaints and would likely stop the committee from pursuing investigations. The Senate Ethics Committee is currently far more active than the House Ethics Committee, which does not accept outside complaints.
(Currently, Sen. Pat Roberts is trying to block the same electronic filing bill with Ensign’s anti-investigation amendment. If you want to get rid of this Ensign protecting amendment, you can help out here.)
Now, I don’t know if Sen. Ensign was trying to make the ethics process difficult to protect his own hide, but give a listen to how seriously he takes this issue.
He even states that ethics complaints could be written on a bar napkin. I’d gander that writing on bar napkins is something that Ensign is more used to than the Senate Ethics Committee.
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Ensign’s Scandal Really Was More Than Just An Affair
After speculating about whether Sen. John Ensign’s affair included payouts to his mistress and her family, about every news outlet is reporting that Ensign’s parents, who are casino moguls, paid off Cynthia Hampton’s family to the tune of $96,000. Some reports state that these payments could be just the tip of the iceberg. And no one has yet dug deeper into the payments coming from Ensign’s congressional office — that would be taxpayer money — and his campaigns.
The biggest concern with Ensign’s parents paying off the Hamptons is that, in doing so, they relieved their son of having to make the payments himself and file them in his taxes. This revelation, had Ensign run for president, would have been severely damaging. Of course, as we’ve seen, the details of the affair and subsequent payments have come out already. (Although not in the self-reflective manner of Gov. Mark Sanford.)
Like most of the current bizarre news spectacles pouring out over the last few weeks — Sanford and Gov. Palin’s awkward resignation press conference — there will be more information coming out soon. Was there more money? And where did it come from? Hopefully, the Senate Ethics Committee starts to look at this right away. (Or maybe the IRS.)
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Ensign Tried to Stymie Ethics Committee, Calls Come for Committee to Investigate
Since Wednesday, when the sex scandal engulfing Sen. John Ensign morphed into a public expense scandal, we’ve learned quite a few new details. Ensign was not blackmailed by Douglas Hampton. Cynthia Hampton’s salary at Ensign’s campaign doubled during the time of their affair. Ensign helped get jobs for Douglas Hampton and his son after they left Ensign’s Senate office and the NRSC, respectively.
What we still don’t know is whether Douglas Hampton was handsomely paid with taxpayer money when he left Ensign’s Senate office and whether this could constitute as hush money. There are beginning to be calls for a Senate Ethics Committee investigation with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asking for the committee to investigate and require disclosure from Ensign. This is just such an awesome idea and here’s why:
Back in 2007, around the time that Ensign was pursuing his close friend’s wife, Ensign was leading a crusade to derail a bill that would require electronic filing of Senate campaign finance reports. (Yes, this bill, the one Sunlight has been advocating for since 2006.) How was Ensign trying to derail the bill? By offering an amendment that would require any group filing an ethics complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee against a senator to disclose all of their donors (pretty much any lawyer will tell you that this is unconstitutional). This would, in effect, stymie the open process by which the Senate Ethics Committee accepts complaints and would likely stop the committee from pursuing investigations. The Senate Ethics Committee is currently far more active than the House Ethics Committee, which does not accept outside complaints.
(Currently, Sen. Pat Roberts is trying to block the same electronic filing bill with Ensign’s anti-investigation amendment. If you want to get rid of this Ensign protecting amendment, you can help out here.)
Now, I don’t know if Sen. Ensign was trying to make the ethics process difficult to protect his own hide, but give a listen to how important he takes this issue.
He even states that ethics complaints could be written on a bar napkin. I’d gander that writing on bar napkins is something that Ensign is more used to than the Senate Ethics Committee.
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Is Ensign’s Sex Scandal More Than a Sex Scandal?
Yesterday, Sen. John Ensign admitted to an affair with a campaign staffer who was also the wife of Ensign’s administrative assistant. The couple ensnared in this torrid love triangle is Douglas Hampton, the administrative assistant, and Cynthia Hampton, an employee of Ensign’s 2008 campaign and his Battle Born PAC. We know that Ensign revealed the affair because Douglas Hampton essentially blackmailed the senator. But, were the Hamptons receiving excessive pay from Ensign during the affair period? Politico looked at the official office payments to Douglas Hampton and found some numbers that look a bit… odd:
Douglas Hampton was paid about $101,000 in 2008 and $144,000 in 2007 as Ensign’s administrative assistant. But a financial disclosure form he filed in 2007 and 2008 – required for senior congressional staffers – showed only checking and savings account worth a maximum $30,000 combined.
A review of public records shows that the Hamptons in 2006 took out a $1.2 million mortgage on their Las Vegas home, at an interest rate of 8 percent.
Now, you might immediately think that $144,000 for an administrative assistant is an absurd amount, but administrative assistant is often synonymous with chief of staff on the Hill. However, if you look to the reporting period of 4/1/2008 to 5/1/08:
Hampton was paid approximately $20,000 over this one month period. At the same time, Ensign hired a chief of staff, John Lopez, ostensibly to replace Hampton. If we are to assume that Hampton’s annual salary is around $144,000 — the cap on staffer salaries is around $160,000 — then the $20,000 for one month ($240,000 in a year) would be far higher than his normal rate of pay. Over the four months of 2008 Hampton received $101,000, far more than his rate of pay for all of 2007.
There are a few points to be made here:
1) Staff salary reporting is often not aligned with the dates shown. If you look at Legistorm, you will see dates aligned with amounts. This is often not accurate, or includes bonuses with attribution.
2) Hampton could have collected his vacation pay, sick leave and a bonus at his termination, which would make his salary appear inflated.
3) Hampton could have stayed on to train Lopez in his new job. This would explain the overlap of two employees holding the same job.
(More: While writing this post, Politico released another report showing that the son of Douglas and Cynthia Hampton was on the payroll of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) while Ensign headed the organization. Also, this post about whether the Hamptons were pushed to extort Ensign due to a subprime mortgage on their house is worth a look too.)
Since these questions are integral to whether Hampton was received extra pay while Ensign was sleeping with his wife, there are important disclosure problems that need to be addressed. They are:
- The Senate does not disclose their office expenditures online in any format at all. The House is planning on disclosing online in August. The Senate has no plans.
- We could use better staff salary expenditure information so that the pay doesn’t look so confusing. Sorry Hill staffers, I know you hate it, but you work for the government.
- Why is it that Senate campaigns do not disclose expenditures? Yet another failure due to the lack of electronic filing in the Senate. Due to the lack of electronic filing we can’t — easily — find the precise amounts paid to Cynthia Hampton through Ensign’s campaign committee, only his PAC.
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Senators Signing XML Vote Letter
Earlier, I wrote about a “Dear Colleague” letter circulating in the Senate written by Sen. Jim DeMint asking for roll call votes to be put online in XML format. The signers of the letter, so far, include a bipartisan cast of senators. They include Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Sen. John Ensign (R-NV), Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), and Sen. DeMint (R-SC).
If you aren’t represented by any of these senators, you might want to check with your senators and see if they’ll sign the letter to support the release of roll call votes in XML. This ought to be a no-brainer.
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No E-Filing Fix in the Senate, Yet
National Journal’s Eliza Krigman reminds us all of the United States Senate’s failure to catch up with modern times and file their campaign finance reports in electronic format. Sunlight’s spent the past three years trying to get this legislation passed. The 110th Congress finally let the bill out of committee, only to see Republican senator after Republican senator hold, block, and delay the bill. Here’s what Krigman has to say:
Believe it or not, the Senate is dragging its feet into the modern era of information-sharing and is still using a hard copy system for filing campaign finance reports. With paper filing, final disclosure reports of senatorial candidates are not available to the public until after the election due to the time it takes the Federal Election Commission to process the paperwork.
What’s stopping senators from e-filing when campaigns have all the information available electronically? That’s exactly the question Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., has been asking. He is the author of the Senate Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, which would require reports filed with the Secretary of the Senate to be filed electronically and forwarded to the FEC within 24 hours. In the past, Feingold has signed up 47 cosponsors from both sides of the aisle; his bill failed to pass in the last Congress but his office tells National Journal the senator plans to re-introduce the legislation in the 111th Congress.
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But Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., effectively put the kibosh on the e-filing legislation by insisting on an unrelated and controversial amendment to require groups that file ethics complaints to disclose their donors. Contrary to his past legislative position, Ensign went on the record this past October saying that he is “100 percent for electronic filing.”
In regards to Sen. Ensign, I’ll believe it when I see it. We’ll keep you informed as to when Sen. Feingold introduces a new version of the e-filing legislation for the 11th Congress.
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Sen. Ensign’s Enemy List
Today, NARAL Pro-Choice Oregon filed an ethics complaint against Sen. Gordon Smith for using Senate property to make a political message. That adds NARAL Pro-Choice and their donors to Sen. John Ensign’s enemy list. So far as I can figure it out, these are the groups that Sen. Ensign wants to unconstitutionally force (see: NAACP v. Alabama) to disclose their donors:
NARAL Pro-Choice Oregon
Judicial Watch
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
U.S. Justice Foundation
National Law and Policy CenterWatch out, if you want accountability for your senator Sen. Ensign might add you to his enemies list. (Rumors have it that Sen. Ensign’s list is written on a beverage napkin with crayons.)
For background and action check out Ellen’s post from yesterday and Pass223.com.
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S. 223 Keeps Getting Support
Like the Little Engine that Could, Senate Bill 223, the Campaign Disclosure Parity Act, keeps chugging along against some pretty intense opposition. In August we launched Pass223.com to build support and find out which senators are willing to officially support the bill and to go on the record to oppose John Ensign’s poison pill amendment. Our persistence has created two new cosponsors Sens. Chuck Schumer and Daniel Akaka.
Keep calling your senators and asking them to cosponsor S 223 and oppose the Ensign amendment we need to demand that the Senate stop dragging their feet on this bill. I think we can get this little bill to the top of Capitol Hill.
