Here is the 75 page report on former Senator John Ensign, the scandal involving his affair with one of his own staffers, his subsequent firing of the woman and her husband, and of course the real killers, the many attempts to cover it all up.
Here are some highlights:
He either convinced both his parents to commit perjury on his behalf, or possibly tricked them into signing “sworn” statements that they didn’t understand. When questioned by investigators about the claims in the written statements, the denied making any such claims.
He ordered documents shredded that were evidence of his inappropriate conduct assisting his former staffer (the husband of the boinkee) in lobbying efforts. This former staffer has already been indited. He also deleted relevant electronic documents after receiving formal notification that such documents were to be preserved for an inquiry. The committee sees this as evidence of obstruction of justice.
He repeated lied about the nature of payments made to his former staffers, denying it was severance pay (which is illegal for some reason in this case). In fact, he called it severance pay in front of multiple witnesses, and even wrote down in his own personal journal that it was indeed a severance package.
He bypassed the Senate email system and created a Gmail account to hide emails related to his unethical and illegal activities.
Need we go into details about how his actions were unwelcome by the woman, who repeatedly asked him to stop? Or that he spent thousands of dollars calling her. Interesting that his actions suggest stalking, but that word doesn’t appear in the report.
Other sordid little details like the husband chasing Ensign around an airport parking lit in rage when he finds out about the affair.
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It just goes on and on. Ultimately they conclude that if Ensign had remained in the senate to fight these charges, he would have been expelled had he been found guilty. This is an almost unheard of punishment.
Unusually for a bipartisan congressional report, but the release of the document, and the referral to the Justice Department for possible criminal charges were approved by a unanimous vote by committee members.
Most of these allegations were alleged at the start. How often is the media more or less correct when first breaking allegations? This guy fooled or convinced his parents to do acts which look like felonies. Makes Newt serving divorce papers on his hospitalized wife seem almost just creepy and narcissistic by comparison.
I’ve been stewing about this since I heard the news earlier.
Regardless of his party affiliation, Ensign is without doubt one of the scummiest lowlifes to ever serve in the Senate. I doubt many Republicans are likely to rush to his defense. He has betrayed his wife, children, Senate colleagues, constituents and on and on. Ensign is one of the most deceitful, manipulative and selfish people to come along in U.S. political life in a while.
The worst thing to me isn’t that he has destroyed his career, his family and the family of his former friends the Hamptons. It isn’t that his actions and manipulations have put former staff members in danger of prosecution because they were dumb enough to believe in him. Or that he has brought some of his friends in the Senate (I’m looking at you Tom Coburn) into his sordid cesspool of sliminess.
No, that isn’t what has me supremely pissed. It’s that he coerced his elderly parents into making a probably illegal $96,000 “severance payment” (read: hush money) to the woman he was having the affair with. And then it appears he tricked them into signing a statement they didn’t fully understand that has now put them at risk of being vulnerable to prosecution.
Opportunistic self-serving piece of shit.
I hope they throw the book at his sorry ass and he rots in prison.
Exerpt - “Coburn then acted as a go-between for the Hamptons, their attorney, and Ensign when the parties tried to hash out a multi-million-dollar payoff for the Hamptons.”
Coburn repeated told Ensign to pay off the family; make it go away. (Hamptons include the pursued staffer and her husband).
My favorite thing about this whole sitch is that it’s gonna make Sharron Angle look calm and reasonable in comparison. Heck, she may even get elected this time!
ETA: And if she does get elected, I promise to start a new Pit thread about her called “The Congresswoman with the crazy crazy”.
Wow, that guy really really really wanted to have an affair. If only he could have put his mind into balancing the budget, we’d have a surplus by next year!
