Doug Hampton, the husband of John Ensign's mistress, says Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) urged Ensign to pay Hampton off to the tune of $1.2 million to make the whole mess go away. Now Coburn won't talk, claiming doctor-patient privilege.

In a statement, Coburn, who is a doctor, said any conversations he may or may not have had with his pal Ensign about how to best keep his adulterous affair a secret are strictly confidential:

I was counseling him as a physician and as an ordained deacon. ... That is privileged communication that I will never reveal to anybody. Not to the Ethics Committee, not to a court of law, not to anybody

Except as Josh Marshall points out, Coburn is an OB/GYN. So any treatments he was giving to Ensign were highly unorthodox.

Send an email to the author of this post at john@gawker.com.