In particular, the committee said Ensign “conspired to violate and aided and abetted” Hampton to violate a moratorium on lobbying for former aides. In a report prepared by special counsel Carol Elder Bruce, the committee laid out eight findings, saying that there is “substantial credible evidence” that Ensign violated federal law, Senate rules and his own office polices in the fallout of the affair, which ended in August 2008. Other senators like Ensign have resigned to avoid potentially harsh sanctions by the committee. Since 1789, only 15 senators have been expelled from the body - and 14 of those were charged with supporting the Confederacy during the Civil War. Ensign not resigned and had we been able to proceed to that adjudication, that it would have been substantial enough to warrant the consideration of expulsion,” Ethics Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said on the Senate floor. “These findings are so disturbing … that had Sen. The committee referred the findings to the Justice Department and the FEC to investigate the possible violations. It was salacious in detail, alleging an almost obsessive pursuit by Ensign of Cindy Hampton, a former aide, and his attempts to pay off Hampton’s family as part of what the ethics panel called a “web of deceit.” The 68-page report was not only explosive in its conclusions - it alleges Ensign violated Federal Election Commission rules and campaign finance law and obstructed the Ethics Committee investigation. It all spilled outon the Senate floor Thursday when the Select Committee on Ethics released in stark detail a series of damaging allegations, in the most extensive ethics investigation of a senator in nearly two decades. But his efforts to sweep the affair under the rug eventually backfired, unraveling a once-promising Senate career that ended with an embarrassing resignation last month and new allegations that he broke a series of federal laws with his coverup.
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