Ensign Faced Formal Questioning Over $96,000 Payment

 

That formal testimony, scheduled for May 4, was the final step as Senate investigators prepared for what were almost certain to be Senate ethics charges against Mr. Ensign, Republican of Nevada. Mr. Ensign’s resignation is effective May 3.

In the letter, issued late Thursday, Mr. Ensign acknowledged he was stepping down to avoid further scrutiny — hoping that his departure from the Senate would mean the end of any further questions about his affair with Cynthia Hampton, the wife of his former senior aide, Douglas Hampton.

But in interviews Friday, officials said the two leaders of the Ethics Committee — both the top Democrat and the top Republican — had decided not to let the investigation disappear. They are likely to take the unusual step of issuing a statement that details evidence of wrongdoing uncovered in the committee’s 22-month investigation, its largest in more than a decade. Those details could include interviews with dozens of witnesses and a review of records of Mr. Ensign and his family.

The investigators were focused in particular on the assertion by Mr. Ensign that the $96,000 payment made in April 2008 by Mr. Ensign’s parents was a gift to help longtime family friends and had nothing to do with any effort to keep Douglas and Cynthia Hampton from disclosing an affair that might wreck a political career.

Mr. Hampton, in an interview in 2009 with The New York Times, said that this was in fact a severance payment, made as part of an elaborate plan with Mr. Ensign to find Mr. Hampton work as a lobbyist so that he could maintain his wages after he left his Senate job. Mr. Hampton had been one of the senator’s closest friends and most influential aides until he learned that his wife was having an affair with Mr. Ensign.

Any charges against Mr. Ensign that the Ethics Committee might have made probably would have revolved around the payment.

If it in fact was a severance payment, it could represent an illegal campaign contribution by Mr. Ensign’s parents because Cynthia Hampton had served as the treasurer of his political campaign. A severance payment to her should have been recorded as a political expenditure.

The senator and his mother, Sharon Ensign, both provided sworn statements to investigators from the Federal Election Commission when it investigated the payment, asserting that it was in fact a gift to the Hamptons, who before the affair were close family friends.

Robert L. Walker, a defense lawyer representing Mr. Ensign, declined Friday to address questions about the matter.

The Ethics Committee also has been investigating if Mr. Ensign conspired to help Mr. Hampton, after leaving his office, violate a one-year lobbying ban by contacting Mr. Ensign’s staff to assist two Nevada companies that Mr. Ensign had helped him get work with. Mr. Hampton has said this was part of their mutual plan to transition him out of his Capitol Hill job.

All of this was to be addressed in the May 4 deposition — a formal, sworn interview that is considered the final step before the Senate Ethics Committee would have voted on possible charges. At that point, if Mr. Ensign contested the charges and did not voluntarily agree to a punishment of some kind, the committee most likely would have moved to hold a public hearing on the accusations — and released thousands of pages of documents it had gathered as part of its nearly two-year investigation.

That investigation record will most likely now never become public, as the rules require that the accused lawmaker be given an opportunity to review the record and contest any documents before they are released.

But the Senate Ethics Committee can still choose to make some kind of a public statement — even after Mr. Ensign resigns — detailing material it had turned up in its investigation, Senate officials said. It can also still make a referral to the Department of Justice asking it to consider criminal charges based on any evidence of wrongdoing it might have found.

Those choices will have to wait until the Senate is back in session, which does not happen until early next month. Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the Ethics Committee, and Senator Johnny Isakson, Republican of Georgia, the vice chairman, are currently on a trip to China.

One Senate official on that trip, interviewed by telephone Friday, said that both of them expressed determination to not let the case against Mr. Ensign simply disappear as a result of his resignation.

“Neither one is interested in just dropping this,” the Senate official said, asking that he not be named, as he was not authorized to discuss the matter.

In a statement, Ms. Boxer and Mr. Isakson said simply that the case was not yet closed.

“The Senate Ethics Committee has worked diligently for 22 months on this matter and will complete its work in a timely fashion,” the statement issued late Thursday said. “Senator Ensign has made the appropriate decision.”