in july of 2008 nearly a year before then mike slanker and his wife who is also the finance director of the nrsc were e-mailing with doug and cynthia hampton about the affair. that means when you put it all together that at least three people in the national republican senatorial committee, senator ensign himself, the chair of the committee, plus the nrsc's political director, plus their finance director, all knew what was going on. while they had ensign's mistress's son on the nrsc payroll. joining us now is the reporter who obtained these telling new e-mails, columnist for "the las vegas sun" and the host of face to face and thanks very much for coming back on the show. >> thanks for having me. >> what do these e-mails tell us about the republican party's role in the ensign affair that we didn't know before? >> well, as you said, i think the implication was from mike slanker's original statement was he didn't find out about this until june 16th when ensign disclosed it. now it's clear that he and his wife, two top officials of the senatorial committee knew about it. now, when exact

mike slanker, who is the top political guy at the republican senatorial committee last year, and hise, lindsay slanker, who was the top money person at the nrsc, clearly knew about this in early 2008, shortly after the affair began, and they clearly knew about it when doug hampton went to work for them in may of 2008. so what does this look like now? it looks like to some like a cover-up had ensued. it looks to some like john ensign was willing to use his top political aides at the republican senatorial committee to try to appease the husband of the wife he was sleeping with. it's all tawdry and ugly. i can assure you no one in that republican senate caucus is happy this stuff is being talked about. >> are we learning more people knew about the exchange of money, particularly to the mistress' son who ended up working for the senator. he was 18 years old i think at the time. and ultimately also that large sum of money from ensign's parents to the mistress. >> i'm not sure how significant brandon hampton's internship was. i think it complicates and muddies the picture of all this and u