Fox News Denies Report: We Didn't Force Ensign To Admit Affair

Fox New is denying claims that Doug Hampton — whose wife Cynthia is the other woman in Senator John Ensign's sex scandal — sent the network a letter pleading for help exposing the affair five days before the Senator announced it in a press conference and that Ensign came forward with the affair because he knew Fox was working on the story.

The Las Vegas Sun reported Friday that Hampton sent Fox News' Megyn Kelly a two-page, single-spaced letter dated June 11 detailing the affair and asking for help in exposing the Senator. The Senator came forward with the affair on June 16 — in part, a spokesman told the Sun, because his office had learned that Hampton approached "a major television news channel."

"We learned of this fact before the news conference," the spokesman told the Sun.

Tom Lowell, senior producer of "America's Newsroom," hosted by Kelly and Bill Hemmer, says no one at Fox News ever received a printed letter, but that a booker on the show received an email from Hampton with the letter attached on June 15 — the day before the Senator's press conference.

"We never received any letter from Mr. Hampton," Lowell told the Huffington Post. "He might have sent it, but we never received it. He did reach out to us about 24 hours before the news conference, and he sent an e-mail to a booker on my staff."

Lowell said that a member of his editorial staff followed up with Hampton that day.

"We followed up with him, but he seemed evasive and not credible, thus we didn't pursue it," he said. "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.

"We always evaluate people when they call into the newsroom in terms of: does this sound like its solid? Does it sound like its actionable?" Lowell said. "There were some questions here, so we decided that we would make some inquiries but that it wasn't something we needed to move on immediately. And before we could nail everything down and confirm this story the Senator had already announced his press conference.

"We get hundreds and hundreds of items a week," he added. "They could be requests for help, please look into this, I think someone did this...we have to filter all that. Clearly this guy had a story to tell and we just didn't get to it before the Senator got to it."

Lowell also stated emphatically that no one at Fox News reached out to the Senator to alert him about the story.

"I know there are people asking if we alerted the senator," Lowell said. "Definitely no one on our editorial team called anyone in Senator Ensign's office prior to the announcement. We just hadn't gotten to that point of confirming the story yet. Somehow, somebody told the Senator something and I don't know how that happened. But I categorically deny that we ever reached out to the senator in any way shape or form prior to him making his announcement."

Ensign spokesman Tory Mazzola could not be reached for comment Friday morning.

Get HuffPost Media On Facebook and Twitter!

Comments

[Travis bdboy]

You make me laugh Faux....bl­aime it on some"booke­r"...were we born yesterday?

"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.

ANOTHER EFFIN FIRST

[wingnutgator]

I live in Vegas, and have always been an Ensign supporter, but he has shown himself to be a real hypocrite on this one. The people who get on the "family values" soap box the highest usually have problems of their own. Vitter, Limbaugh, Craig, Haggard, Bill Bennet etc to name a few. I am libertarian in my social views, and believe these issues of gay marriage, abortion, etc are becoming irrelevant and should be left up to the individuals and not the govt. If the republicans would concentrate on economics and defense they would come back quicker.

[Jaladeno]

They would, but they won't, so I am in my 17th year as a RINO.

[Horus45]

"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."

That is unless of course if it is a Democrat, then all bets are off!

[brt929]

You sure got that right!

Follow up when a Republican is involved, but had it been a Democrat, they would have been on air in 20 minutes or less!

[DestinationsUnknown]

Notice -

No one in Iran is sending Foax anything

What do you think of that Rethugs?

[DonTampa58]

"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."

And since when has this stopped Fix Noise in the past?

[DestinationsUnknown]

any one from Iran blogging on fox noise

mccain? why not?

[NOV42008]

Later it will be reported when the letter they didn't receive was received by some low level employee, who they fired for letting the letter sit on their desk.

[Kalitipo]

fkae noise sat on the LETTER because it was not a Democrat..­........sh­ameless gong of thieves

[JRsNana]

I love this one. It's a knee slapper. "We didn't get the letter." HA! These guys are LYING through their teeth.

[tomasedison]

FBI should be in his offices investigating all his payoffs before he destroys the records.

[kdlaiusa]

Don't believe anything this lying news channel says. If they say yes, the truth is a big certain no.

[regroupthink]

And what about the fact that since the story broke, Fox has all but burried it. They're followers brains are to delicate to handle this type of info.

[kissMYfish]

Fake News is right. They didn't force EnSin to come clean about the affair. They just let him know that the Husband. of the lady. he had an affair with; was ready to give the information to the News. EnSin knew that he had to do something. So he came clean. Fake News stopped other MSM from acquiring the information. They tipped off EnSin. The mistake of the Husband was to assume that Fake News was a real News Network.

[noaxe397]

Why would the woman's cuckolded husband send the expose to Fox? I'm not getting something here. Clearly, Fox would tip off a possible 2012 GOP presidential candidate about this embaressing news. If the husband wanted to expose Ensign why not go to Olberman or Maddow or CNN?

There's Republican arithmetic going on here and it doesn't add up.

[Megaflow]

I agree that something isn't right here, but I'm pretty sure Olbermann and definitely Maddow wouldn't run with something like that unless it was already corroborated. They just don't break that kind of story in general.

[RaderBarbarian]

Because, like so many Republican believers in Faux News, the husband thought he was dealing with a real news organizations, not a propaganda machine. You see, Faux viewers are "believers," they are not realist who seek the truth. They "believe" in Faux, just like they believe in other imaginary friends. Sometimes they discover they have been fools. I suspect that this good Republican husband is one of those people these days. Too bad he didn't wise up earlier, but hey, he wouldn't have been a Republican in the first place if he was very smart, don't forget that blatant and undeniable fact!

[VPN]

"We followed up with him, but he seemed evasive and not credible." That's really rich coming from FAUX Noise, when did they ever care about credibility, certainly NOT with any of their mouth pieces or the guests they interview.

[Mauiboy]

Some follow-up. If they did, they got it wrong anyway! Is this not the perfect example of the story of The Blind Men and an Elephant??

[Jaladeno]

Wasn't that story about MCain, Graham, Lieberman and Limbaugh?

[nick1936]

The great FOX NOISE cover up will go down in History

[Jaladeno]

as what, business as usual?