Just as we were all getting sidetracked by one GOP sex scandal, there was an interesting development in another.
The Las Vegas Sun reports that Fox News received Doug Hampton’s bizarre letter — about the affair between Hampton’s wife Cindy and Sen. John Ensign — three days earlier than the right-wing news channel had previously acknowledged.
The paper reports:
Fox said it didn’t receive the letter until June 15, when it arrived as an attachment to an e-mail. But FedEx tracking of a “priority envelope,” which a reliable source said contained the hard copy, shows it was delivered on the morning of June 12.That would mean the national news organization had additional time to investigate and report Ensign’s affair before the senator’s own admission of the relationship with Hampton’s wife, who worked for the senator’s leadership political action committees.
Of course, the main significance of the news, as the paper notes, is that it raises the likelihood that someone at Fox, or in touch with them, tipped Ensign to the news, prompting the Nevada senator to come clean. Fox senior producer Tom Lowell has previously denied telling Ensign about the letter, but Lowell declined to comment for this story.
This could get even more interesting…