Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) | Flickr/<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/trevino/1349844632/sizes/l/">trevino</a> (<a href="http://www.creativecommons.org">Creative Commons</a>).

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Democrats have suffered through their share of bad behavior lately, but honestly, none of it compares to the travails of Republican Sen. John Ensign. I mean, the guy had an affair with his top aide’s wife, paid out hush money in a way plainly intended to skirt IRS reporting rules, and then worked illegally to get his ex-aide some consulting income doing congressional lobbying. “Senator Ensign has stated clearly, he has not violated any law or Senate ethics rule,” says Ensign’s flack, but Ensign can say it as clearly as he wants. The evidence says otherwise.

Today, the New York Times got hold of some emails suggesting pretty clearly that Ensign, who was “a bit rattled” according to one of the messages, intervened with a guy named Bob Andrews, who was trying to get help with some energy projects in Nevada:

According to the documents, Mr. Ensign forwarded the note about the company’s business plans to Mr. Hampton with a message of his own saying: “I think you have played golf with him. This is who I met with.”

That led to a series of meetings between Mr. Hampton and Mr. Andrews about consulting work. “It was my understanding he was in the lobbying business,” Mr. Andrews said of Mr. Hampton. “Being able to lobby our Congressional and senatorial lawmakers was certainly something we were exploring.”

A typical excerpt from one of Hampton’s emails to Ensign is below. How this guy manages to stay in office mystifies me. I guess he must have taken lessons from David Vitter and Mark Sanford.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate