Sen. Tom Coburn issued a blistering attack on the husband of Sen. John Ensign’s mistress. Coburn: Ensign flap manipulated

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) on Thursday issued a blistering attack on Doug Hampton, the husband of Sen. John Ensign’s (R-Nev.) mistress, saying that he had provided false information about paying off Hampton after Ensign revealed he was having an affair with his wife.

“John Ensign hasn’t put me in a tough position at all,” said Coburn, a housemate of Ensign’s at a Capitol Hill home owned by a Christian fellowship. “The person that’s deceiving now is Doug. And you all need to go do the investigation now on that side of it and quit asking us and ask what's the motivation here.”


Coburn was responding to a televised interview Doug Hampton gave to a Nevada television station in which he went into detail about the Ensign’s affair with his wife, which reportedly started in December 2007 and ended in August 2008. Hampton, a former close friend of Ensign’s and chief of staff to the senator, said that Coburn and other peers were involved in talks to urge Ensign to pay Hampton for the damage he caused his family — including potentially giving him “millions” of dollars.

“This was at the request of Tom Coburn and some people to try and help them manage John,” Hampton said of the talk about payments, which he said were necessary because Ensign continued to “pursue” his wife and left his family in financial shambles.

“I didn't talk to John Ensign personally at all. Our attorneys did talk. Our attorneys absolutely talked, because Sen. Tom Coburn asked and was involved in these negotiations out of good will and good faith,” Hampton said earlier in the broadcast.

Jon Ralston, who interviewed Hampton, asked: “Tom Coburn, a U.S. senator, told John Ensign, 'Listen, you've got to deal with this. Make these folks whole. Let them get out of your life. And let's move on. Isn't that exactly what happened?”

Hampton responded: “Absolutely.”

Hampton suggested that Coburn urged Ensign to write a February 2008 letter apologizing to Hampton’s wife, Cindy, a campaign aide to Ensign.

But on Thursday, Coburn said: “He is in error, and he’s manipulating the situation and you are all buying it.”

“I was never present when a letter was written, never made any assessment of paying anybody anything. Those are untruths. Those are absolute untruths.”

Ensign admitted the affair last month, and stepped down from a Senate GOP leadership position. He apologized, but he has refused to answer questions about whether he acted improperly with his former aides and whether he wanted to pay off Hampton to keep the situation quiet. A spokesman said Wednesday that Hampton was “consistently inaccurate” in his statements, and Ensign told POLITICO Thursday he planned to issue a statement on the matter later Thursday.

In the meantime, the scandal has touched Coburn, a fellow Christian conservative.

“Dr. Coburn did everything he could to encourage Sen. Ensign to end his affair and to persuade Sen. Ensign to repair the damage he had caused to his own marriage and the Hampton’s marriage,” Coburn’s office said in a remarkable public rebuke of his friend and fellow Christian conservative. “Had Sen. Ensign followed Dr. Coburn’s advice, this episode would have ended, and been made public, long ago.”

On Thursday, Coburn declined to go into detail about his conversations with Ensign.

“I’m not going to go into that — that’s privileged communications. I’m never going to talk about that with anybody. … I never will, not to a court of law, not to an Ethics Committee, not to anybody — because that is privileged communication that I will never reveal to anybody.” He suggested that his position as a physician and an ordained deacon could keep the information privileged.

And the senator lashed out at the media for continuing to focus on the matter and for helping “tear apart” the Hamptons and the Ensigns, who each have three kids and have known each other for years.

“You’ve got two families that are back together and you guys are going to help tear them apart. What do you think their kids are thinking about what you’re writing right now? You’re helping tear apart two families that are back together — you need to quit.”