Former Senator Rick Santorum may have told his ex-colleague John Ensign the Hamptons were going public with the affair. Did Santorum tip off Ensign?

Doug Hampton, husband of Cindy Hampton, Sen. John Ensign’s (R-Nev.) mistress, claims that former GOP Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.) may have tipped off his ex-colleague that the Hamptons were going public with the story over the adulterous relationship.

In an interview with Jon Ralston, a Las Vegas Sun columnist, Doug Hampton suggested that Santorum told Ensign that the Hamptons were going to reveal the affair and then Ensign held his own Las Vegas press conference in a bid to control the political damage from the revelation.


“One of the correspondents that is part of Fox News is Rick Santorum,” Hampton told Ralston in an interview. “I sent a note to Rick. I begged Rick to call me, to talk to me before, and he didn’t. Obviously, in my opinion, I could be wrong, but that would be what I supposed happen. And if I’m wrong, Rick, forgive, but it appears to me how it happened.”

Hampton pointed to the fact that Ensign was in Washington on June 15, but then traveled back to Nevada the next day to hold his press conference, as evidence that someone had told Ensign about a letter that Doug Hampton had written to Fox News on June 11, offering information on the affair between the senator and his wife.

Doug Hampton did not say when he had written to Santorum, or whether he had actually spoken to the former senator. Santorum, a conservative Republican, served in Congress for 16 years, including 12 in the Senate, until he was defeated in 2006 by Democrat Bob Casey.

There has been speculation for weeks on whether Ensign had been informed from someone inside the network about Doug Hampton’s letter to Fox, including whether Santorum had some role in the incident.

Santorum could not be reached for comment when the Ensign sex scandal first broke in mid-June, and a Santorum spokeswoman said on Thursday night that he would not be available for comment.