After helping send the Ohio Republican to prison for corruption, Heaton pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy. He admitted accepting a golf trip to Scotland, expensive meals, and tickets to sporting events between 2002 and 2004 as payoffs for helping clients of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Heaton, 29, worked for Ney from September 2001 to July 2006, becoming in 2002 the youngest chief of staff on Capitol Hill. Heaton's lawyers said in court documents that Ney preferred to hire inexperienced staffers because they had not received extensive ethics training and lacked the maturity to question him.
Heaton is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday in federal court. He faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison but federal sentencing guidelines call for a more likely sentence of 18 to 24 months. He is asking for no jail time, in part because of how hard he worked for the FBI to help take down Ney.
"I made several terrible decisions while working for Congressman Ney, but in my mind the most awful was my silence," Heaton wrote in court documents filed last week. "I remained silent about much that occurred during my tenure with Congressman Ney because I was too fearful of the consequences if I spoke up."
He said he realized Ney's behavior was inappropriate but did not initially come forward because he did not want to be a "tattletale on the playground."
Ney was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison in January.
Abramoff, the star witness in the sweeping Capitol Hill investigation, is serving prison time in an unrelated Florida case and is awaiting sentencing in the corruption case.
