Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

jon ralston:

Sen. Ensign has misguided sense of victimization

“Seeking of the truth should be not only part of the Justice Department and part of our judicial system, but also should be ... a goal of reporters today,” Ensign said. “Unfortunately, too much of our press is ... (1) biased or (2) just about ‘gotcha.’ ”

— Sen. John Ensign, Politico, 3/25/10

Just as telling the truth should be the responsibility of every elected official.

Or, perhaps, that reflects a bias or an attempt to play gotcha with Sen. Aggrieved. For that I deeply and sincerely apologize to Ensign, imbuing my words with the same sincerity and conviction Sen. Aggrieved put into that plaintive, handwritten letter to his mistress in which he used God as a shield to say he was ending the affair (shortly before the devil got the best of him and he started up with Cynthia Hampton again).

Sen. John Ensign’s sad, pathetic attempt to establish victimhood this week in a startling interview with Politico only continued his downward spiral from morally upright crusader to morally bankrupt hypocrite. There are many victims in the repulsive Ensign saga, including (and some of these are arguable) his wife, his children, his parents, his ex-best friend Doug Hampton, his wife’s ex-best friend Cynthia Hampton, his staff, voters who trusted him, business associates who trusted him, anyone subpoenaed by the Justice Department and/or the U.S. Senate Ethics Committee. But, most assuredly, one person who is not a victim and instead a serial victimizer is the junior senator from Nevada, who now, in a self-pitying interview with Politico, points fingers at we evildoers in the Fourth Estate.

Sen. Aggrieved made the comments about the media after doing what he does best — dodging a question about his scandal, this one about whether he had been subpoenaed. And then, from the piece penned by Manu Raju:

“Asked if he thought the press was targeting him unfairly, Ensign said, ‘I’ll let you make your own call.’ ”

OK, I will: No.

How does any member of the media, to use the senator’s admonition, seek the truth when the person at the center of the story has stiff-armed the press since his confess-and-run news conference 10 months ago? When forced by Doug Hampton’s revelations, none of which has been proven to be inaccurate despite Ensign’s claims to the contrary through prepared statements, the senator has dissembled about “gifts” from his parents after months of lying by omission to his friends and associates about exactly why he wanted them to help put money in Hampton’s pocket.

Again, I deeply and sincerely apologize to Sen. Aggrieved for those biased, gotcha statements, as I am sure he knows I am as sincere as he was when he had his spokeswoman tell everyone he has always followed the strictest standards of ethical conduct when he obviously has not. (A former federal prosecutor has said, based on Ensign’s own statements, there is enough evidence to indict him.)

Many of us have been seeking the truth in this matter for months. Indeed, 36 weeks ago I posted some basic questions for Ensign to answer that he has yet to address, making me wonder if he is trying to impede those he says are so unfair and biased. To wit:

• Can you, after claiming your family paid $96,000 in gifts to the Hamptons, prove that’s what it really was and not severance, as Doug Hampton asserts? Can you produce evidence?

• Why were only two of the three Hampton children given “gifts” from the supposedly “generous” Ensign family? Did you not like one of the children, or does this indicate these were not gifts?

• You had your staff put out a statement that Hampton’s statements on “Face to Face” were “consistently inaccurate.” Nothing he has said has yet proven to be false. Please detail his inaccuracies.

Those are a few, and many have since arisen, thanks to reporting from national and local media outlets seeking the truth, as Sen. Aggrieved seems to think we should do. Allegations of Ensign putting the arm on companies he regulates to get Hampton jobs, perhaps as a lobbyist, which would violate the law. Allegations that the senator sought campaign contributions in exchange for helping businesses, a very serious charge the feds are tracking.

I do, once again, deeply and sincerely apologize if those words sound like biased or gotcha sentiments, meaning that with all the sincere contrition Sen. Aggrieved must feel for having dragged his family, friends and others through the muck of his life.

We don’t have to play gotcha, senator. You got yourself. Now we’ll see if the FBI and Senate Ethics Committee can, too.

Jon Ralston’s column appears Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Ralston can be reached at 870-7997 or at [email protected].

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