Report: Coburn Urged Ensign to Pay Millions to Mistress

So says the Las Vegas Sun, which has conducted an exclusive interview with Doug Hampton, the husband of Sen. John Ensign’s (R-Nev.) former mistress.

Hampton and Ensign were bonded by their conservative evangelical faith. Hampton said he reached out to intermediaries involved in a Christian fellowship home in Washington, D.C., where Ensign and several other powerful Washington figures live.

The group, including [Oklahoma GOP Sen. Tom] Coburn, a well-known conservative, confronted Ensign and suggested that the Hamptons needed to be given financial assistance — in the millions of dollars — to pay off their $1 million-plus mortgage and move them to a new life away from Ensign.

And that’s not all. Hampton also reiterated the claim that Ensign paid his wife $25,000 in severance money when she stopped working for the Nevada Republican’s campaign.

If true, Ensign faces a possible felony violation of campaign finance law if he paid the severance but failed to report it as an in-kind contribution to the campaign committees where she worked, according to ethics complaints filed against him.

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.

Ensign was probably hoping that this thing had gone away following the more recent — and more bizarre — news coming from the governors’ mansions in South Carolina and Alaska. The Doug Hampton interview, a two-part series which airs tonight and tomorrow, ensures that that won’t be the case.