This time he had to answer the tough questions.
Veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent Steve Kroft has come clean about a steamy affair with a New York City lawyer, a fiery three-year fling that included hot hotel hookups and torrid text messages.
“I had an extramarital affair that was a serious lapse of personal judgment and extremely hurtful to my wife and family, and for that I have nothing but regret,” Kroft said in a statement to the Post.
“My wife and I are committed to each other and are working hard to get past this, and consider it a private matter.”
It’s a story you won’t see on “60 Minutes.”
Kroft was getting his kink on with the aid of Viagra and racy text messages — including one in which he told his lover he “would rather be eating your pudding,” according to a new report from the National Enquirer, which hits newsstands Wednesday.
The married CBS newsman — who once famously confronted Bill Clinton over the then-Arkansas governor’s rumored womanizing — convinced Harvard-educated Lisan Goines that he was trapped in a sexless marriage with his wife, author and fellow journalist Jennet Conant, the Enquirer reports.
The pair then launched into a three-year affair — the details of which would never get past the censors on Kroft’s own award-winning show. In one sexting session, Kroft allegedly cooed to Goines, “Miss you and all that goes with it. Especially my favorite tastes and colors … pink and brown.”
Another time, the 69-year-old newsman asked Goines, 41, “What exactly would be your preference,” the Enquirer reported.
“U all over and deep inside of me,” Goines responded.
At one point, the hard-working TV journalist, who has a son with Conant, lamented his long hours on the job, the report said.
“Working late. Just ordered out. Would rather be eating your pudding,” he allegedly wrote.
“Don’t work too hard this week bc I wanna wear you out afterward,” Goines replied.
“You got it,” Kroft responded, according to the Enquirer.
The newsman — who boasted to Goines that he was the “go-to’’ interviewer for President Obama — had some particularly unusual tastes in bed, the mag said. One time, he was “pouring champagne in her behind and drinking the bubbly,” the report claims.
Kroft first spotted Goines in 2011 at a bar in the swanky St. Regis hotel and sauntered over to chat, according to the Enquirer.
“Steve quickly told Lisan, ‘I have to see you again,’ ” a source told the magazine.
Apparently, the line worked.
“A few weeks later, he arranged to meet her at another hotel for cocktails,” the source said. “After the drinks, he handed her a room key and told her it was the only way he ‘could be alone’ with her.
“There was a lot of kissing and touching, but he couldn’t spend the night because he had to get back to his wife,” who is 55 and whom Kroft married in 1991.
Kroft and Goines, who is also married, consummated the affair a week after he first passed her his hotel key, the report said, when the soon-to-be lovers met at the $700-a-night Four Seasons hotel.
“Steve booked the room for two nights,” the source told the magazine. “The first night they had oral sex, and the second night, they went the whole way.”
The affair went on in New York and in Washington, DC, where Kroft invited the lawyer to meet him when he was there on business, the magazine said.
At some point, she was forced to set a few ground rules, according to the report.
“Honestly, you’d have to buy my ticket this time,” Goines wrote him.
“Not a problem,” Kroft allegedly replied. “Come and let me devour u.”
“Alright,” Goines texted back. “So hold that thought and get me a ticket.”
Still, Kroft, who is worth a reported $16 million, might have been long on passion but short on cash, said a source, who called him “a cheapskate.”
“Of all the times she traveled to meet him in DC, Steve only paid once, and as the affair continued, the affairs went on from luxury to kind of low end,’’ the source said.
“The whole thing soured because she got to the point where it was only about Steve.
“Lisan never wanted him to leave his wife, and she never contemplated leaving her husband and she told him it was best that it end,” the source said.
But even after their break-up, the two continued to meet up for drinks, including last month when they hooked up at the Essex House’s Southgate Bar & Restaurant — just a few blocks from his Upper West Side home.
“They looked like lovers,” a witness said. “It was electric. They chatted like old friends over a couple of cocktails and gazed into each other’s eyes. They were completely smitten.”
The two left and hopped into a cab, but not without Enquirer spies seeing them making out in the back of the taxi, the publication said.
Kroft is no stranger to the subject of adultery. He snagged the infamous stand-by-your-man interview with the Clintons in 1992 during his presidential campaign.
“His problem?” Kroft said in the opening segment of that interview. “Long-rumored allegations of marital infidelity finally surfaced in a supermarket tabloid.”
Sixteen years later, Kroft got the first post-election interview with Obama and his wife, Michelle.
Pundits have criticized Kroft for what some perceived as “softball” questions to Obama.
In his response to the report, Kroft insisted his dalliance did not reflect on his job.
“This was a personal failure, not a professional one, and had no impact whatsoever on my job as a journalist,” Kroft said.
Through a spokeswoman, Kroft denied making any “go to guy” statement about Obama to Goines or anyone else.
Kroft, a five-time Peabody Award winner, has been with “60 Minutes” for 26 years and with the network for 31 years.