Ex-aide wants Ensign to come clean
He was once a Washington power player, a top aide to a U.S. senator making more than $160,000 a year.
Today, Doug Hampton has no job, no car and no permanent home. He stays in the Las Vegas area with his children or a friend, and his most valuable possession might be his six cases of clothes.
“Clothes, laptop, phone, backpack,” he said last week. “I am a nomad.”
Now 52, he’s also a man with a mission: To clear his name and see that the truth, as he views it, is finally known.
Hampton plans to go on national television soon, with an outlet he won’t publicly name, to discuss the scandal that led to his criminal conviction. If he has anything to say about it, the story is far from over.
Hampton was back in the news last week with the release of thousands of pages of documents about the criminal investigation of his former boss and former friend, ex-U.S. Sen. John Ensign of Nevada.
The scandal that led to Ensign’s resignation and Hampton’s conviction began when Hampton discovered his wife, Cindy, and the senator were having an affair.
A 2011 Senate Ethics Committee report found “substantial” evidence that Ensign conspired to violate lobbying laws by arranging a new job for Doug Hampton, lied about a $96,000 payment to the Hamptons and obstructed justice by deleting emails after being formally notified to preserve them.
But Ensign, who resigned just before that report’s release, was never charged.
Instead, the Justice Department got an indictment of Hampton, who pleaded guilty in 2012 to a misdemeanor lobbying violation. He served a year’s probation.
The disparate treatment still eats at Hampton, both because of how it’s affected his life and because of the impression it left: that he was a willing part of yet another tawdry Washington scandal.
“That’s just criminal,” he said in a lengthy interview last week, during which he grew emotional at times. “That’s just wrong that people perceive me as being involved in some kind of a swap or trade … for money because I found out John was having an affair. That’s just intolerable. That’s sad. That’s painful. That’s wrong.”
Ensign, 56, who was a veterinarian before his political career, opened a new animal hospital near Summerlin in 2013. The hospital website includes a picture of a smiling Ensign in a white coat.
“Never has told the truth,” Hampton said. “Just walked away. Who does that?”
Last week, staffers at Ensign’s hospital said he had told them he would not speak to the media. Cindy Hampton, Doug’s ex-wife, did not return email and phone messages seeking an interview. Doug Hampton said she has moved to Colorado and remarried.
THE SCANDAL
The affair between Ensign and Cindy Hampton began in 2007 after a break-in at the Hamptons’ Summerlin home led them to stay temporarily with the Ensigns. Doug Hampton discovered the affair two days before Christmas when he saw a text message from Ensign on his wife’s phone.
In early 2008, Hampton said, Ensign told him he had to leave his government job. The Senate report says Ensign arranged for Hampton to take a job in Nevada with November Inc., a firm run by Mike Slanker, Ensign’s former campaign manager, and his wife, Lindsay Slanker.
The crime then committed by Hampton is relatively clear cut: He violated a law that bans lobbying by former top Senate employees within a year of leaving the government.
But Hampton said that leaves a question: “How can Doug Hampton have done this by himself?” If Ensign arranged the job, knowing it was illegal for Hampton to lobby right after leaving the Senate, why wasn’t he also prosecuted?
Hampton knows the question has been asked. And he knows the chance of a different answer from federal prosecutors is small. He doesn’t expect Ensign to go to prison, and he doesn’t expect the Senate to reform itself to prevent abuse of power.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the organization that pushed for the investigation of Ensign and sued to get the records released last week, said it believes federal prosecutors declined to charge Ensign because of fear of losing in court and “undue deference to public officials.”
The records show one prosecutor wrote, “this is a really tough case to win.” Publicly, the Justice Department has said it didn’t have enough evidence to charge Ensign.
And Hampton acknowledged he has no new evidence to bring forward. But he wants to make people understand the facts in a new way, to “fill in the blanks” and change the public’s view of him.
He also holds out hope that Ensign, under pressure from family and friends, will come clean and take responsibility.
“I think eventually it will all close in on him,” Hampton said.
‘WHAT WE’VE BECOME’
In 2012, Hampton pleaded guilty in federal court.
But when asked last week whether he acknowledges he broke the law, he said, “I acknowledge I was put in an impossible situation where the law could not have helped but be broken by what (Ensign) did.”
Facing felony charges and as long as 35 years in prison, Hampton said he had no choice but to take a deal.
He said he hasn’t worked since April 2013, when he was let go after a friend’s plastics company was sold to a German firm. He has applied for jobs, mostly in sales, through Monster.com and other career sites.
Hampton’s criminal record is an obvious red flag if someone Googles his name. But so is his résumé itself, he said: Why is someone who held such a senior government position sending out résumés for midlevel openings?
“I’m sure that I probably could go get a job at 7-Eleven. But why? Why has it come to that in my life?”
Hampton said the contrast between the treatment of himself and Ensign provides a depressing lesson: “The leaders of our country aren’t held to the same standards (as) the people they govern.”
Most Americans would agree with that statement, but they’d probably also say it’s a fact of life. That cynicism might be Hampton’s real enemy.
“Because a man was powerful enough to cover it up and lie, ‘Oh well?’ ” he said. “That’s what we’ve become.
“I know that’s the truth. I understand that. I’m not an idiot.
“But guess what? I walked the line. I’ve walked through this, and I get to talk. I get to ask these questions.”
Contact Eric Hartley at ehartley@reviewjournal.com or 702-550-9229. Find him on Twitter: @ethartley.
