Reporting from Las Vegas — An aide to Nevada Sen. John Ensign said today that Doug Hampton, the husband of the senator's former mistress, had recently demanded "cash and other financial benefits" from Ensign through an attorney.
"Doug Hampton's outrageous demand was referred to Sen. Ensign's legal counsel, who is handling the matter going forward," Tory Mazzola, an Ensign spokesman, said in an e-mail.
Daniel Albregts, attorney for Doug and Cynthia Hampton, declined to comment.
The allegation ups the ante in an increasingly messy spat between the once-rising GOP star and Doug Hampton, a former Ensign staffer who had approached Fox News about the affair.
In a distraught letter to a Fox reporter, dated June 11 and obtained by the Las Vegas Sun, Hampton said Ensign's "heinous conduct" had "ruined our lives and careers and left my family in shambles. . . . I need justice, help and restitution for what Senator Ensign has done to me and my family."
Tom Lowell, senior producer of the cable channel's "America's Newsroom," said today that a show booker received an e-mail from Hampton on Monday, the day before the senator announced the affair.
"We followed up with him, but he seemed evasive and not credible, thus we didn't pursue it," Lowell told the Huffington Post. "We certainly weren't going to rush to air with accusations against a sitting senator without doing due diligence on the reputability of the claims."
Lowell denied that anyone at Fox News tipped off the senator, who resigned his GOP leadership post Wednesday.
ashley.powers@latimes.com
