Editor’s note: This post has been edited from its original version to correct an error.
By now, you’ve heard that U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn, one of our own John Ensign‘s former roommates at the churchy C Street house in Washington, D.C., has turned over a number of e-mails to Justice Department investigators probing the fallout from Ensign’s affair with a staffer, without pain of subpoena. The Review-Journal reports today that Coburn wants to be helpful.
“Dr. Coburn has always said he will gladly cooperate with any official inquiry into the matter as he is doing now,” said Coburn spokesman John Hart. (Coburn is an ob/gyn.)
But that’s simply not true. In fact, Coburn said quite the opposite in July 2009, when he announced he would invoke various privileges (doctor-patient, priest-penitent) to avoid testifying about the events that transpired in Ensign’s affair, and Coburn’s own role in its aftermath.
“I was counseling him as a physician and as an ordained deacon,” Coburn said in a UPI interview. “That is privileged communication that I will never reveal to anybody. Not to the [Senate] Ethics Committee, not to a court of law, not to anybody.”
So, Hart is either unaware of his boss’s previous statements on the issue, which is bad, or he lied outright to the Review-Journal (which noted the contradiction in its story today), which is worse.
Of course, this isn’t the first time Coburn has violated his alleged privileges. He also spoke with the New York Times about the Ensign matter.
Coburn was heavily involved in the Ensign affair. According to Doug Hampton, Ensign’s former best friend and top staffer, as well as the husband of Ensign’s mistress, Coburn was present at the C Street house when Hampton confronted Ensign about the affair. Coburn also was allegedly a go-between, trying to arrange a money settlement between Ensign and Hampton that would have resolved the affair.
At the conclusion of the R-J‘s story, however, Coburn denies being involved in any negotiations between Hampton and Ensign. But given that Coburn’s statements have been inconsistent and Hampton’s have always checked out, it’s likely true that Coburn did try to help the two men strike a deal.
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