Did ex-Ensign aide break law by contacting old boss?

Thus far, the fallout from Sen. John Ensign’s extramarital affair – and the admission that his parents paid his mistress and her family $96,000 after she left his employ – has mostly been in the court of public opinion, as The Ticket has reported.

Could a newspaper story today have far more serious consequences?

Let’s recap: Doug Hampton and his wife, Cynthia, both worked for Ensign, Doug as a high-ranking aide in his Senate office. In spring 2008, the couple said they were pushed out of their jobs because of Ensign’s affair with Cynthia.

Ensign (see photo) made some calls to his Nevada buddies to find Doug consulting work. Two major campaign donors, NV Energy and Allegiant Air, contracted with Doug Hampton. He then made a number of calls and e-mails on their behalf, including to Ensign's then chief of staff, John Lopez.

Outside the Beltway, that might seem innocuous. But according to a N.Y. Times story, these were potentially criminal acts. The paper wrote:

Senate ethics rules and federal criminal law prohibit former aides, if they have ‘the intent to influence,’ from making ‘any communication to or appearance’ with any senator or Senate staff member for a year after leaving their jobs. A separate law required Mr. Hampton to register as a lobbyist if he intended to press a company’s case on Capitol Hill.

Hampton said he ignored the one-year lobbying ban on Ensign’s advice, while Lopez said their conversations were merely informational. Probably not the last time this distinction is debated.

Other tidbits in case you care about how the infidelity began and ended:

•  Ensign realized he had feelings for Cynthia Hampton when they attended a White House Christmas party together  in 2006, Doug Hampton said. There, they posed for a picture with President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura.

•  The $96,000 from Ensign’s wealthy parents was intended as severance, Cynthia Hampton said, though Ensign's attorney has described the payments as gifts.

•  Fellow Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma was a middleman when husband Doug Hampton sought financial compensation from Ensign for his wife's indiscretion. Coburn told Hampton that $8 million was too much, but passed on a lower figure to his Senate colleague: $2 million. Ensign severed the negotiations.

•  Allegiant Air, which eventually hired Hampton, let him go after the scandal broke. Both Hamptons are unemployed and planning to sell their home in Las Vegas -- which, long ago, the Ensigns had encouraged them to buy. Good luck in this Vegas housing market.

-- Ashley Powers

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Photo: Associated Press

Roman Polanski's arrest: a Swiss political ploy to ward off U.S. charges against banking giant UBS?

Hollywood is fighting the case against film director Roman Polanski, who was arrested in Switzerland over the weekend. Polanski pleaded guilty to having unlawful sex with a 13-year-old girl but fled the U.S. before sentencing -- living outside the U.S. for the last 30 years. "We're calling on every filmmaker we can to help fix this terrible situation," said mogul Harvey Weinstein.

But Washington is watching too.

According to Britain's Guardian, rumors are circulating that Swiss authorities may be using Polanski as a sacrificial lamb to appease their U.S. counterparts in Washington who are investigating a widening tax-evasion scandal involving Swiss banking giant UBS.

"Almost everyone agrees that the 76-year-old director's arrest on arrival at Zurich airport smacks of back-channel deal-making," wrote Edward Helmore in the online news magazine The First Post. "But who's been making the deals and with whom? Was the decision to help the Americans an attempt to ease tensions between the two countries in the wake of an offshore banking scandal?

Ticket has put in a call to the Justice Department and is awaiting a callback.

In the meantime, this is what is fueling the speculation.

A New Jersey businessman, Juergen Homann, last week  became the fifth UBS AG client since April to agree to plead guilty to concealing money from U.S. tax and finance authorities by using offshore accounts, including Swiss bank UBS. The Internal Revenue Service last week extended an amnesty program -- until Oct. 15 -- for Americans who hid money in offshore accounts to come clean. So far, 3,000 have turned themselves in. And in a blow to the pride of Swiss banking secrecy, as part of the investigation,  UBS -- which already agreed to a $780-million fine -- is preparing to hand over 4,450 client names to Justice and the IRS.

Swiss Justice Ministry spokesman Guido Balmer rejected talk that Polanski's arrest was a political move. "There was a valid arrest request and we knew when he was coming," he said Sunday. "That's why he was taken into custody. There is no link with any other issues in question."

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo Credit: Roman Polanski at the 2008 Cannes film festival. Photograph: Guillaume Horcajuelo / EPA

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ACORN nemesis once targeted Planned Parenthood

The activist filmmaker behind the documentary that toppled ACORN is talking.

James O'Keefe posed as a pimp and covertly filmed ACORN officials discussing how he and Hannah Giles, pretending to be a prostitute, could set up a brothel with underage girls from El Salvador while dodging taxes.

After the movie aired on Andrew Breitbart's website, Congress cut off ACORN's funding. 

Deflecting questions about whether he's a conservative, O'Keefe told NBC News that he was a "progressive radical" who hoped to do more documentary exposés in the future.

Meanwhile, NBC aired audio of O'Keefe during an earlier campaign when he called Planned Parenthood and tried to make a donation to abort African American babies. "There's way too many black people in Ohio, so I'm just trying to do my part," he told a staffer. Her response, "Whatever." Then she hung up.

[For the record: Another version of the phone call with Planned Parenthood shows that the staffer did not hang up and that the conversation continued. Follow this link for a report comparing the NBC report with another audio of the conversation.]

O'Keefe claims he is just trying to root out corruption, but are his tactics fair -- or even legal? ACORN has now sued the pair, and Breitbart, saying they violated Maryland wiretap law.

The issue provoked heated debate last night between Fox News' Bill O'Reilly and House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank . Take a look. 

-- Johanna Neuman

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Former Rep. Mark Foley to debut as talk radio host tonight

Yep, it's true. There's no shame in America, only a rehab industry.

Mark Foley, the Florida Republican who left Congress in 2006 amid accusations he sent lurid e-mails to male House pages, is credited with helping to sour the electorate's view of the Grand Old Party in a year when Nancy Pelosi and the Dems swept into power.

In the years since, he's been in real estate investment, contemplating a return to politics.

Tonight, he makes his debut as a radio talk show host. "Inside the Mind of Mark Foley,"  billed by the station as a program that “will expose the inner workings of Washington, D.C.," airs at 6 p.m. EST on WSVU-AM (960) out of North Palm Beach, Fla. It can also be heard at www.seaviewam960.com.

Inside the mind of Mark Foley? Does anyone really want to know?

Apparently the Conservative Republican Alliance does. In an interview, Foley held forth on several issues:

On his sex scandal: “I am solely responsible for the problems I faced in 2006. I took responsibility, I resigned from the job I loved and a career I had built for 30 years. I did not break any laws; however, I owed my constituents, my colleagues and my family a far better standard than I set.”

On returning to politics: “I doubt I will reenter the political arena as an office seeker, but I will use my experience and my voice to help others, to rally for economic sanity, to bring about real reforms on a local, state and even national level.”

On Florida Gov. Charlie Crist winning the Republican primary for Senate: “If anyone thinks this election for U.S. Senate is over, then they better pay attention. We are in a very unique time in America’s political life…. There are no sure bets in politics, and money alone is not the key barometer.”

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Associated Press

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Who ruined Washington? Vote here

When South Carolina's Joe Wilson pointed his finger at President Obama and shouted out on the House floor, "You lie!" it arguably marked a new low in American politics. It also exposed the essential quality of politics these days -- in which the two major parties are dominated by the extreme wings and the middle is left without a voice.

How did Washington get so coarse?

Perhaps it was Brian Lamb, with his C-SPAN cameras, who lifted a veil on the town's secrets, unleashing a new generation of media trainers and posturing politicians. Or maybe it was Fanne Foxe, the Argentine stripper who jumped into the Tidal Basin when her date, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Wilbur Mills, was arrested for drunk driving. Their escapades helped end an era of media protection for politicians' private behavior. Private behavior had made it to the police blotter, and ever since scandal has bred cynicism about Washington.

I have another theory about who's responsible. In an opinion piece in this morning's Times, I suggested that it was former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. In his savvy understanding that running against Washington would be more advantageous for his brew of vulnerable freshmen, Gingrich changed the congressional calendar, sending them home every weekend. So Washington was no longer a place of comity, no longer a town where folks fought all day on the political battlefield and then broke bread together in the evenings.

Read the piece here and let us know who you think stripped politics of its civility.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Wilbur Mills with Fanne Foxe, a stripper known as the "Argentine Firecracker," outside the Pilgrim Theater in Washington, D.C. in 1974. Credit: Associated Press

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Hollywood in Iowa -- the tax credit fiasco

Ah, Iowa, land of corn -- and now, movie-making corruption.

The Farm Belt is learning a painful lesson these days in the glitzy, star-studded world of Hollywood's accounting practices: Like in the baseball movie "Field of Dreams," if you build it, they will come ... and may take your tax dollars to buy things you don't want to pay for.

On Monday, Iowa Gov. Chet Culver asked the state's auditor office, the state Department of Revenue and Iowa Atty. Gen. Tom Miller to join the investigation into the state's film tax-credit program, amid reports of flawed oversight and accounting procedures.

The growing scandal over Iowa's film tax-credit -- officially called the Film, Television and Video Project Promotion Program -- has already seen at least two politicos fall. Mike Tramontina, the director of the state Department of Economic Development -- which administered the program -- resigned from his post Friday. And today, Thomas Wheeler, the manager of the state's film office was fired.

The program is the nation's most generous, with a rebate to filmmakers of up to 50% of what they spend.

But Culver called a timeout last week, suspending the program and putting a halt on all reimbursements to film production companies. The reason: An internal audit found a number of, well, discrepancies, including using tax credits to pay for luxury vehicles that filmmakers never used in their movies.

I can just hear the film execs now: "Aren't all farmers rich because of ethanol? We really thought that Mercedes would bring authenticity to the shoot."

The press release cuts to the chase.

The governor's halt of the program has the pro-film folks in the Hawkeye state freaked out, with calls from the Iowa Motion Picture Assn. to reinstate the program. According to IMPA -- and yes, there really is such a thing -- there are four films that were shot in Des Moines and one in Council Bluffs that are all owed rebates.

And how much is this going to cost the state?  A recent story in the Des Moines Register reports that a last-minute rush by film producers could cost the state up to $300 million.

Ouch.

--P.J. Huffstutter

Photo: A "ghost player" recreating the role of Chicago White Sox legend Shoeless Joe Jackson plays ball with a young tourist at the baseball diamond created for the 1989 motion picture "Field of Dreams." Credit: Jonathan Daniel / Getty Images

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Is Rielle Hunter forcing John Edwards to claim paternity? [Updated]

Just when it seemed the John Edwards saga couldn't get any more sordid, new revelations come that the 2004 Democratic vice presidential candidate and former North Carolina senator wants to acknowledge he is the father of a child born to a mistress, but that his wife, Elizabeth Edwards, has "yet to be brought around."

According to the New York Times, Mrs. Edwards, struggling with cancer, has been resisting her husband's instinct that it's time to step up in the case involving Rielle Hunter and her toddler daughter.

Maybe past time, since his once-loyal aide Andrew Young is writing a book and someone leaked the book proposal to the New York Times, with a lot of unsavory details. Among them: The onetime darling of the populist set asked the aide to cover for the senator and claim he was the father of the baby. Oh and the senator promised to marry Hunter as soon as Elizabeth Edwards died -- in a rooftop ceremony, accompanied by the Dave Matthews Band.

If that weren't enough, a federal grand jury is looking into the unique question of whether payments that Hunter got from two Edwards supporters -- Fred Baron, a wealthy Dallas trial lawyer, now deceased, and Bunny Mellon, the 99-year-old heiress to the Mellon fortune -- constitute a crime.

[Updated 2:41 p.m.: The New York Times also reports that Ms. Hunter may soon move to the Wilmington area, where the Edwards family has a secluded island estate.]

Aside from the question of how close this man came to being one heartbeat away from the presidency comes an inquiry about why Edwards' mistress keeps using her 19-month-old daughter like an shield -- even bringing her, as seen above, before a federal grand jury investigating campaign finance laws. We wonder if she is trying to remind the former senator of his affair.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo credit: Jim R. Bounds / Associated Press

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A 'tea party' protest photo turns out to be fake

How many people showed up on Capitol Hill to protest President Obama's political agenda on Saturday?

It depends on whom you ask.

(UPDATE: Don Surber notes here that despite the disagreement over actual marchers, there can be no disagreement over who watched the tea party march on TV: More than twice as many as watched the president's Minnesota appearance on two stations combined.)

As our colleague in Washington, Joe Markman, writes today, several conservative groups behind the march say that as many as 2 million people turned out to protest everything from Obama's proposed healthcare overhaul to the legitimacy of his election.

Others, however, say the crowd was much smaller. A spokesman for the District of Columbia Fire Department made an unofficial estimate of 60,000 to 70,000 people.

Arguments about crowd estimates are, as Markman writes, "as much a part of Washington as its granite monuments."

This one took a rather scandalous turn, however, when a photo circulated among conservatives as proof of a larger crowd was revealed to be a fake.

The photo, shown at right, depicts a crowd stretching from the Capitol nearly to the Washington Monument. It was posted on several conservative blogs and Facebook pages, with notations that it was taken on Saturday. 

But if you take a closer look, you'll see that there is no way it could have been taken Saturday because the National Museum of the American Indian is not there. The museum opened in 2004 on the east side of the Mall -- which should be in the photo's upper right. It's not -- so the photo must have been taken before then.

Several bloggers who ran the photo have begrudgingly corrected their errors.

The blog Say Anything ran a correction. Another conservative blog, Power Line, removed the picture. But in a post explaining why, the site's author took a final dig at what he called the "liberal media."

"There is no doubt that Washington Democrats are well aware of how many people turned out, even as their media outlets try to downplay the event," John Hinderaker wrote.

PolitiFact, the ever-valuable fact-checking arm of the St. Petersburg Times, has much more on the photo controversy.

Meanwhile, here's a video summarizing the day's events:

-- Kate Linthicum

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News shocker: Dick Armey now admires Bill Clinton

Back in the day, when Republicans ran Congress and the Clintons were in the White House, few adversaries were fiercer than Dick Armey vs. Bill Clinton.

Armey, the Texas congressman and GOP House leader, was scathing in his criticism of the Clintons — both personally (he famously told First Lady Hillary Clinton, as she testified on behalf of her healthcare reform bill, that reports of her charm were overstated) and, of course, politically (Armey credits himself with being one of the main obstacles to passage of said healthcare legislation).

President Clinton acknowledged the fraught relationship in that false-bonhomie way of Washington. "I met with Sen. John Glenn recently to decide who should be the next distinguished member of...

California lawmaker resigns after announcing on open mic not 1, but 2, sex acts

First, the big news in California petty politics today: CBS has ordered production on the next "Big Brother" show, No. 12, for broadcast next summer during the 2010 congressional races and in California Senate and gubernatorial elections.

And next week is the two-hour finale of No. 11. So that'll be really, really exciting.

Also today, state GOP Assemblyman Michael Duvall of Yorba Linda resigned his elected position after describing two sexual liaisons to a colleague in some detail -- next to an open legislative microphone. (No, we don't have that transcript here.)

Those things will kill you almost every time. Democratic Vice President Joe Biden dropped an F-bomb near one last winter and, previously, Republican candidate George W. Bush was caught describing a particular passing reporter as a lower anatomical orifice. Embarrassing, though few of the reporter's colleagues disputed the observation's accuracy.

Also, then Democratic Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich was caught on federal wiretaps saying %$#*(& and ##$*)&%. Also, %$#@&*\. None of which is illegal, except that those words were allegedly tied to auctioning off his nomination to fill Barack Obama's U.S. Senate seat. Which isn't illegal in Illinois politics unless the feds say it is.

Shouldn't these legislators pass a law requiring bright red flashing lights on every microphone that is active? What part of, "The world might be listening to your every word" don't they get?

Our colleagues over at LA Now have collected local reaction here to the disclosure and resignation of the married Duvall. Everyone is, of course, shocked and saddened, as even next-door neighbors to mass murderers seem to be in the next day's newspapers.

The item includes a list of two other notorious extramarital political scandals involving Sen. John Ensign of Nevada and Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina. They are both Republicans. The list does not mention San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom nor LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa nor ex-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who was against prostitution before he was really for it. All three are Democrats.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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