WASHINGTON — The Senate Ethics Committee has hired a prominent Washington attorney to investigate allegations against Sen. John Ensign, a sign that it is stepping up its probe into how the Nevada senator dealt with the fallout from his extramarital affair with a senior aide’s wife.
Carol Elder Bruce, a well- known Washington trial lawyer and a former assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, has been named special counsel in the ethics investigation, committee chairwoman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and vice chairman Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., announced Tuesday.
Bruce will lead a preliminary inquiry into allegations that Ensign, a Republican, violated Senate ethics rules and federal law in the aftermath of his affair with Cynthia Hampton, a campaign aide married to another Ensign aide and close friend of the senator’s, Douglas Hampton.
The relatively rare step of hiring a special counsel indicates that Ensign is not out of the woods, although previous investigations into the matter have not yielded criminal charges or disciplinary actions.
Ensign acknowledged the affair in 2009, after Douglas Hampton threatened to go public. The senator later acknowledged that his parents had paid Cynthia and Douglas Hampton $96,000 after Douglas left his job in the senator’s office.
The Hamptons have suggested the payment was severance, but liberal critics have termed it an improper campaign contribution to Ensign by his parents. Ensign called the payment a gift.
