The U.S. Senate Ethics Committee decided Thursday that former Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) broke federal law to try and cover up an affair with one of his aides, sending Ensign's case to the Justice Department.

The committee, composed of both Republicans and Democrats, presented its case on the Senate floor Thursday in an unusually public manner. The committee called for the beginning of a criminal investigation into the former Senator's actions.

“We have reason to believe Senator Ensign violated laws,” Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), chairwoman of the committee, said.

From the Washington Post:

Boxer, reading from a report of the special counsel hired to handle the investigation, said that the evidence against Ensign was “substantial enough to warrant the consideration of expulsion” had he not resigned.

Ensign, who has said he never violated any rules or laws, resigned May 3 rather than face questioning under oath from the committee.

Ensign has now retained one of Washington’s top criminal defense lawyers, Abbe Lowell, who accused the committee of rushing its report without fully considering a lengthy rebuttal that Ensign’s legal team submitted Wednesday.

“Senator Ensign has admitted and apologized for his conduct and imposed on himself the highest sanction of resignation. But this is not the same as agreeing that he did or intended to violate any laws or rules, and this submission demonstrates that there is a lot more to the issues than the committee’s report indicates,” Lowell and Robert Walker, who defended Ensign before the ethics committee, said in a statement.

The committee has been investigating Ensign for nearly two years, after he admitted to an extramarital relationship with the wife of one of his former aides, Doug Hampton. Hampton was indicted earlier this year, and was heavily indicated in the findings of the Senate report.

The Wall Street Journal reported:

The Senate report found that Ensign facilitated violation of the ban by "pressuring contributors and constituents to hire Mr. Hampton even though he had no public policy experience or value as a lobbyist other than access to the Senator and his office."

Ensign also instituted office polices to make Hampton's contacts with the office "harder to detect, including a shredding policy, discouraging use of official Senate email accounts in favor of Gmail, and directing that all inquiries of the committee go through" Chief of Staff John Lopez, the report found.

Lopez told Senate investigators that he was ordered to call one person who had blocked Doug Hampton from being hired as a lobbyist, and "tell him that he is cut off from the office" and from contacting Ensign. "I remember really feeling like that was abusing the office," Lopez told the panel. Rob Kelner, an attorney for Lopez, declined to comment.

The report also accused Ensign of obstructing the Senate's investigation by deleting important documents and his personal email account. Finally, the report said that a $96,000 payment made by Ensign's parents to Doug Hampton may have violated several federal and congressional rules.

The ethics report also painted a fairly scandalous picture of how Ensign conducted his life during his affair with Hampton's wife, complete with cash exchanges and late-night encounters.

From POLITICO:

In one passage of the report, Ensign’s “spiritual adviser,” Tim Coe, called Ensign from outside of a hotel room where the senator was with Cindy Hampton and told him: “I know exactly where you are. I know exactly what you are doing. Put your pants on and go home.

The report said Ensign engaged in obstruction of justice by destroying documents and emails relevant to the investigation — and that he engaged in sexual harassment against the Hamptons and discriminated on the basis of gender against Hampton.

“Sen. Ensign had enormous power over Ms. Hampton,” the report said. “He controlled the sole sources of income for both Ms. Hampton and her husband. He controlled separate payments made on the Hamptons’ behalf so that their children could attend an expensive private school with the Ensign children.”

“These findings are so disturbing … that had Sen. Ensign not resigned and had we been able to proceed to that adjudication, that it would have been substantial enough to warrant the consideration of expulsion," Boxer also said in her speech Thursday.