WASHINGTON — The Senate Ethics Committee on Thursday declared that it has “substantial and credible evidence” that former Sen. John Ensign broke federal laws in his effort to cover up an extramarital affair he had with a political aide, referring its case to the Justice Department and Federal Election Commission.
In a highly unusual public rebuke, the bipartisan committee presented its case on the Senate floor, announcing it had voted unanimously to release its findings and request the Justice Department restart a criminal investigation into the Nevada Republican’s actions.
“We have reason to believe Sen. Ensign violated laws,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., chairwoman of the panel, during the speeches.
Boxer, reading from a report of the special counsel hired to handle the investigation, said the evidence against Ensign was “substantial enough to warrant the consideration of expulsion” had he not resigned.
Ensign, who has said he never violated any rules or laws, resigned May 3 rather than face questioning under oath from the committee.
Ensign has now retained one of Washington’s top criminal defense lawyers, Abbe Lowell, who accused the committee of rushing its report without fully considering a lengthy rebuttal that Ensign’s legal team submitted Wednesday.
The Ensign case has been unusual in many respects: his affair was with Cynthia Hampton, his political treasurer, while her husband, Doug, served as one of Ensign’s top aides on the legislative staff.
Now, less than 10 days after his resignation, the investigation ended in even more unusual fashion with a public rebuke on the Senate floor by the ethics committee’s leaders and its first criminal referral of a colleague in decades.
Boxer and Georgia Sen. Johnny Isakson, the ranking Republican on the evenly divided six-member committee, issued a 75-page report that included eight counts of either legal violations or internal Senate rules violations.
