Doug is not exactly the most likable character. He flat refuses to take responsibility for any of his demands for money. Is he just unhappy with the amount of money he got? Your guess is as good as anybody’s.
You can also track the scandal by clicking the t’nw overview, here.
That would include Senator John Ensign, Cindy Hampton, Doug Hampton, Senator Tom Coburn, the Christians of ‘C Street’ and at least 9 payments totaling $121,000. This is really an obscene ‘affair’, putting on display the worst of people’s characters: selfishness, lust, greed, jealousy, convenient self-righteousness, political gamesmanship and payoffs, extortion, and clambering for fame and attention. And absolutely nobody, to this minute, has come close to telling the whole truth.
Here’s the big overview of what’s (perhaps) known as of now:
John Ensign is a Republican Senator from Nevada (Dem. Majority Leader Harry Reid is the other). Doug and Cindy Hampton work for Ensign (both in Nevada and in Washington D.C., apparently, but that’s not entirely clear).
At Christmas recess at the end of 2007, back in Nevada, burglar(s) breaks into the Hampton house. And away we go…
–Ensigns tell Hamptons they can move in with them, and they do.
–Affair between John Ensign and Cindy Hampton begins (see how dirty this is already?).
–Dec. 23rd, while picking up his son at the airport (with the Ensigns perhaps nearby? unclear-), Doug Hampton intercepts a (’dirty’?) text message between the adulterers that makes it clear they’re lovers, or cheaters.
–Hampton confronts one or both, and the truth’s admitted.
–Next day, the 24th, a giant ‘meeting’ or ‘confessional’ is convened inside the Ensign house with all the members of both families present. Ensign apologizes. It is not clear what Cindy does or says. Merry Christmas everyone.
–The Hamptons press forward, continuing to work for Ensign.
–Doug Hampton comes to believe Ensign is not contrite for his behavior. Believes he is, in fact, still pursuing Cindy.
–Hampton contacts members of devout Christian D.C. organization ‘C Street’ (aka ‘The Prayer House’) to prevail upon affiliated Senator Ensign to leave his wife alone.
–Some time in February 2008, a group of C Street members, including ultra-conservative Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, confront Ensign. Hampton alleges that during the meeting, C Streeters implore Ensign to make good for his transgressions, including arranging for money to be paid to the Hamptons so that they may move away from Ensign, to go to Colorado.
–During this meeting, Ensign writes (in probably insulting language) a letter (see here) to Cindy apologizing for his behavior:
“What I did with you was wrong. I was completely self-centered + only thinking of myself. I used you for my own pleasure, not letting thoughts of you, Doug, [childrens’ names] come into my mind…I betrayed everything I believed in and lied to myself over + over. I justified my actions because I blamed my wife.
Doug has been a great friend to me through the years + I threw all of that away over wanting to feel good.
Doug Hampton
I take 100 % responsibility for my actions, plain + simple it was wrong; it was sin. God never intended for me to do this. I walked away from Him and my relationship with Him has suffered terribly. I know He loves me and He loves you. He wants to restore Doug and you.”
–Ensign then almost immediately disavows the letter.
–The affair (probably) continues to run through August of 2008.
–Fast forward to June 15th of this year: an obviously still unsatisfied Hampton, having written and copied his own letter about the affair, sends it in an e-mail to Fox News’ Megyn Kelly.
“The actions of Senator Ensign have ruined our lives and careers and left my family in shambles”…”I need justice, help and restitution for what Senator Ensign has done to me and my family”.
–Fox contacts Hampton but does not find him credible. They do not break the story.
–The next day, June 16th, Ensign calls a press conference and admits the affair. Typical D.C. pandemonium ensues.
–June 19th, Ensign’s office releases a statement:
“Within the past month, Doug Hampton’s legal counsel made exorbitant demands for cash and other financial benefits on behalf of his client.”
–Yesterday, July 8th, KLAS TV and Jon Ralston aired the first part of a sit-down interview (see it here) with Doug Hampton in which he spells out his version of the whole dirty business, including some money transaction(s).
Hampton said Ensign paid the woman more than $25,000 in severance when she stopped working for the senator…
Knowingly and willfully failing to report a contribution of more than $25,000 is a criminal violation subject to five years in prison, according to complaints filed last month by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
–Today, Sen. Tom Coburn blasted Doug Hampton for linking him to the scandal:
“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.”
Senator Tom Coburn
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.
–Also today, Coburn nonsensically claimed he was protected from ever telling anybody anything about his part in the scandal:
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) on Thursday said he would not testify in court or before the Ethics Committee about any advice he gave Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) on how to handle his affair with a former staffer, citing constitutional protections for communications during religious counseling, as well as the patient confidentiality privilege.
“I was counseling him as a physician and as an ordained deacon. … That is privileged communication that I will never reveal to anybody. Not to the Ethics Committee, not to a court of law, not to anybody,” Coburn said.
Coburn, incidentally, is an Obstetrician/Gynecologist.
–Also today, finally, Roll Call (’The Newspaper of Capitol Hill’) reported that the parents of Senator Ensign paid the Hamptons eight sums of $12,000.
Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) Thursday acknowledged that his family made nearly $100,000 in payments to family members of his former mistress after her husband, a longtime aide and personal friend, discovered the relationship.
Since Ensign admitted his affair with former campaign staffer Cynthia Hampton, he has repeatedly declined to comment about whether he made any payments to her, her husband, Doug, or other members of the family.
Ensigns, left, Hamptons, right
But in a statement released by his attorney Thursday afternoon, Ensign for the first time acknowledged that in April 2008, his family — backed by his father’s casino and land development empire — made a series of payments to both Hamptons and their children, totaling $96,000.
“In April 2008, Senator John Ensign’s parents each made gifts to Doug Hampton, Cindy Hampton, and two of their children in the form of a check totaling $96,000. Each gift was limited to $12,000. The payments were made as gifts, accepted as gifts and complied with tax rules governing gifts. After the Senator told his parents about the affair, his parents decided to make the gifts out of concern for the well-being of long-time family friends during a difficult time. The gifts are consistent with a pattern of generosity by the Ensign family to the Hamptons and others,” Ensign’s lawyer Paul Coggins said in a statement.
Your public servants, in action. Unbelievable. I need a shower.
FIRST: Once the scandal is beginning to break, slough off the controversy. ‘You guys have lost your marbles. You’re just fishing. You’re a whackjob, cuckoo.’
–”…By the way, this has nothing to do with Governor Sanford…just disappearing! HIS WIFE DIDN’T EVEN KNOW…FOR DAYS! She didn’t, ok, she didnt call for helicopters, or 911. Apparently, apparently their marriage is so dead that she didn’t even call for police. I suspect she killed him, yeah.”
–”Or he killed her…”
–”Yeah–I’d like to bring them both in for questioning, now that we know where he is!”
–”What’s next Governor Sanford–fishing at Christmas? We know how that works.”
–”We know how it works! You and your wife–double murderers!”
SECOND: When the guy turns out to be as bad as suspected, get angry: “Stay away! Fuck you! You’ve got no right, you hypocritical jerks.”
“You don’t get to judge.
The Library of Congress could hardly contain chapter and verse of the multitudes of ways the press and the other Democrats have gotten away with judging Republicans by wholly different standards than that applied to Democrats. But that double standard is 
both obvious and as wide as the Grand Canyon. You show no honor, no equity, no fairness, and no scruples yourselves. You, to put it mildly, do not police your own.
We do. We’ll deal with Sanford. We have standards (you don’t), and we have a long history of punishing and purging our leaders who prove unworthy of trust. For your part, serial adulterer Bill Clinton remains a rock star as far as you are concerned, and that about sums up the standards to which Democrats hold themselves..
So, spare us your mock outrage, your tut-tutting, your finger-wagging, your eyebrows furrowed in anger. If you are well and truly outraged by Mark Sanford’s adultery, but could not trouble yourself to muster even a little mild disapproval against the cretin who wiped his feet with the honor of the office of President of the United States, then you are a hypocrite yourself of the lowest stripe. You are unworthy to judge.
So just shut up.”
THIRD: Turn it around: “You know what? Now that I’ve thought about it, it’s really all your fault…”
The ‘morality and responsibility’ people in American politics, there you go.
Weren’t we already done with this guy? Wasn’t everybody saying how lucky he was that MJ kicked off when he did, eclipsing Sanford’s ugly public whipping? [see here and here]
You’d think he’d have been practically weeping while thanking his super-lucky stars for a reprieve from the unblinking spotlight. Instead, he’s apparently been jealous of the shifting attention. A fresh round of head-scratching and outrage began today as a number of his new statements hit the media, painting him as someone who is deeply flawed and needlessly forthcoming about his private life, to the point of surely hurting and embarrassing his family even more than they are already.
Why in the world would somebody do this? Simple: it’s because he’s an unhappy Republican. He’s finally coming clean about how hard it is to live within the impossible confines of perfect patriotism, patriarchy and Love for Jesus, and now he just can’t dam the catharsis. These lonely cries for attention make for some very sad, brutal stuff.
AP Newsbreak: SC gov ‘crossed lines’ with women
COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford says he “crossed lines” with a handful of women other than his mistress — but never had sex with them.
The governor says he “never crossed the ultimate line” with anyone but Maria Belen Chapur, the Argentine at the center of a scandal that has derailed Sanford’s once-promising political career…
He says that during the other encounters he “let his guard down” with some physical contact but “didn’t cross the sex line.” He wouldn’t go into detail.
Sanford said the casual encounters happened outside the U.S. while he was married but before he met Chapur.
Wow. You can bet that his wife doesn’t want to hear all the pointed details, so why the hell is he going on about it publicly? It’s pretty obvious, actually–petty selfishness. And he’s doing all this after the breaking Jackson story? Terrific.
Sanford Calls Mistress His ‘Soul Mate’
COLUMBIA, S.C. (CBS) ―South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford called his Argentine mistress his “soul mate” Tuesday, but said that he would try to fall back in love with his wife…In a lengthy and emotional interview with The Associated Press in his Statehouse office Tuesday, the governor described five meetings with Maria Belen Chapur over the past year, including two romantic, multi-night stays with her in New York before they met there again intending to break up.
What the hell? That’s fucked. But there’s even more:
The once-promising presidential prospect said he is committed to reconciling with his wife, but professed to The Associated Press his continued love for the Argentine woman at the center of the firestorm that gutted his political future.
In emotional interviews with the AP over two days, he said he would die “knowing that I had met my soul mate.”…
Sanford insisted his relationship with Maria Belen Chapur, whom he met at an open air dance spot in Uruguay eight years ago, was more than just sex.
“This was a whole lot more than a simple affair, this was a love story,” Sanford said. “A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day.”
What a self-centered little douchebag. Oh, you’re really getting the public to sympathize with you, Sanford, you poor unfortunate romantic. I’m sure no one will care about the damage you’ve done to your family, or how hurtful all today’s comments will be to your wife and kids, we’re really just worried about your broken heart and shattered ambitions.
I can’t imagine how the kids are going to have to deal with all these additional revelations, including the fact that Mom was a mistake: the unexciting ‘not soul-mate’, that should sit pretty well with them.
This is why it’s a bad idea to be a Republican. At some point, the idiotic confines of public perfection and the high-wire morality march become too much to bear any more, and everything’s gonna break, and then you’re gonna act like an even bigger douchebag than you already are.
And will the right-wing finally wake up to the impossible demands they make of their politicians for the convenience of using ‘values’ to bludgeon the left? Or how these demands destroy more potential leaders than they create? Hell no.
Instead, they’ll just try to beat us with it like they do everything else. This is an actual ‘Red State’ post written in the aftermath of the Sanford fiasco, I’m not making this up:
To majority media and other Democrats : we police our own, and you don’t get to judge
By all means report the facts. I’m sure you’ll be happy to cover every salacious detail. Have at it. Be sure to cover the pain and suffering of Governor Sanford’s family. While you are at it, cover the depth to which all South Carolina and nation-wide Republicans and conservatives rightly feel betrayed.
Beyond that, just shut up. Shut your lying, hypocritical, power-above-patriotism, hyper-partisan, two-faced, shamelessly double-standard bearing pie hole.
You don’t get to judge.
The Library of Congress could hardly contain chapter and verse of the multitudes of ways the press and the other Democrats have .jpg)
gotten away with judging Republicans by wholly different standards than that applied to Democrats. But that double standard is both obvious and as wide as the Grand Canyon. You show no honor, no equity, no fairness, and no scruples yourselves. You, to put it mildly, do not police your own.
We do. We’ll deal with Sanford. We have standards (you don’t), and we have a long history of punishing and purging our leaders who prove unworthy of trust. For your part, serial adulterer Bill Clinton remains a rock star as far as you are concerned, and that about sums up the standards to which Democrats hold themselves..
So, spare us your mock outrage, your tut-tutting, your finger-wagging, your eyebrows furrowed in anger. If you are well and truly outraged by Mark Sanford’s adultery, but could not trouble yourself to muster even a little mild disapproval against the cretin who wiped his feet with the honor of the office of President of the United States, then you are a hypocrite yourself of the lowest stripe. You are unworthy to judge.
So just shut up.
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