Ensign Resigns, But Details of Ethics Probe May Yet Emerge

By ERIC LIPTON

Senator John Ensign’s departure from the Senate, after more than a year of insisting he would not resign but would fight to defend his name, almost certainly marks the end of his political career. But the embarrassing spectacle is not necessarily over for the Nevada Republican.

The Senate Ethics Committee will now have to decide if it wants to make public any of the evidence it turned up in a year and a half spent investigating the aftermath of an affair Mr. Ensign had with the wife of a former top aide, Douglas Hampton.

Technically, once Mr. Ensign formally resigns — which is scheduled to take place on May 3 — the Senate Ethics Committee can no longer take disciplinary action against him, and it must wrap up its investigation. But nothing prevents the committee from deciding to release a statement of some kind that details what it has found. It also could still refer the matter to the Department of Justice.

The committee chairwoman, Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, and its ranking Republican, Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia, issued a statement late Thursday indicating that their work in fact is not yet finished. That suggests that the public might again hear from the panel.

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

Mr. Ensign himself, in his resignation statement, made clear that he knew some kind of action was about to take place by the Senate Ethics Committee that would only open him up to more scrutiny. That could have included specific charges and possibly a public trial on those charges.

“As is its right, the Senate Ethics Committee is continuing its investigation of issues into which it has been inquiring for the past year and a half,” he said in his statement Thursday. “Indeed, the Committee even decided recently to devote more resources to its investigation by hiring an outside counsel even though the issues have been viewed and reviewed by so many others.”

One particular area of interest for the Ethics Committee has been the $96,000 payment made in April 2008 to Mr. Hampton’s family by Mr. Ensign’s parents, after Mr. Hampton learned that the senator was having an affair with his wife, Cynthia Hampton, who also worked as the treasurer of Mr. Ensign’s political campaign.

Mr. Ensign’s family, at the time the payment became public, described it as a gift. But Mr. Hampton has insisted that it was a severance payment. If that was the case, the payment could be construed as an illegal contribution by Mr. Ensign’s parents to their son’s campaign, which then was paid out to the Hampton family. Federal Election Commission staff lawyers raised that theory last year. And the Senate Ethics Committee, which has subpoena powers, was examining the same question.

Investigators also have been attempting to determine what Mr. Ensign knew about any contact Mr. Hampton had made with the senator’s office, in the months after Mr. Hampton left his job as Mr. Ensign’s senate aide and promptly started working as a lobbyist for two Nevada companies with business before Congress.

Mr. Hampton has said that Mr. Ensign told him to stay in touch with the senator’s office, despite a federal law that forbids contact for a year. Mr. Ensign has denied any such arrangement. Mr. Hampton has already been charged with violating that law, pleading not guilty. The question has been whether Mr. Ensign conspired with Mr. Hampton to violate the lobbying ban.

By resigning, Mr. Ensign has probably succeeded in avoiding a massive public release of thousands of pages of documents from the committee’s files, including transcripts of interviews with dozens of witnesses. That is what happened in the case of Representatiive Charles B. Rangel when he decided last year to fight charges against him in the House.

But expect to hear a bit more — and it could be soon — about just what the Senate Ethics Committee discovered.