RALEIGH, N.C. — John Edwards, a two-time Democratic
presidential candidate and a former U.S. senator from North Carolina,
was indicted Friday on charges of conspiracy and false statements and
campaign law violations stemming from a sex scandal.
The indictment, which culminates a two-year federal
probe, alleges that nearly $1 million that flowed from two wealthy
Edwards supporters to pay costs for Rielle Hunter, his former mistress
and mother of his now-3-year-old daughter, and campaign staffer Andrew
Young qualify as illegal campaign contributions.
The purpose of the money was to protect Edwards’
self-proclaimed public image as a family man by keeping secret his
extramarital affair with Hunter, the indictment said.
An arrest warrant was issued for Edwards, but he is
expected to surrender to federal authorities and appear before a
magistrate at 2:30 p.m. Eastern time in Winston-Salem, N.C., to hear the
charges against him.
The indictment was issued from the Middle District of
North Carolina, where Edwards lives and where many of the financial
transactions occurred. A grand jury in Raleigh had been convened for
months to hear the case. It expired, and the charges were issued in the
new venue Friday.
The indictment charges that Edwards led a conspiracy
with four others, labeled as Persons A, B, C and D, but clearly
identifiable as former staffer Young (Person A), mistress Hunter (Person
B), multimillionaire heiress Rachel “Bunny” Mellon (Person C) and Texas
trial lawyer Fred Baron (Person D.)
“Edwards knew that public revelation of the affair
and pregnancy would destroy his candidacy by, among other things,
undermining Edwards’ presentation of himself as a family man and by
forcing his camping to divert personnel and resources away from other
campaign activities to respond to criticism and media scrutiny,” the
19-page indictment said.
Said U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder: “Democracy
demands that our election system be protected, and without vigorously
enforced campaign finance laws, the people of this country lose their
voice. The U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Department of Justice are
committed to the prosecution of individuals who abuse the very system of
which they seek to become a part.”
In May 2007, Edwards and Young discussed people whom
they could ask to financially support Hunter, who was pregnant, the
indictment alleges.
About that time, Young read a note that Mellon had
sent to Edwards: “The timing of your phone call on Friday was ‘witchy.’ I
was sitting alone in a grim mood — furious that the press attacked
Senator Edwards on the price of a haircut. But it inspired me — from now
on, all haircuts, etc. that are necessary and important for his
campaign — please send the bills to me. … It is a way to help our
friend without government restrictions.”
Mellon is an heiress who lives in Virginia and turned 100 last year.
Over the next eight months, Mellon sent checks
totaling $725,000 through a friend to Young, whose wife cashed the
checks, the indictment said.
Mellon concealed the purpose of the checks by falsely
filling the memos lines with items like “chairs” or “antique Charleston
table” or “book case.” Young used the money for Hunter’s rent,
furniture, car, medical care and other expenses.
In December 2007, Edwards asked Young to claim
paternity of Hunter’s child, telling Young that “his efforts to win the
presidency — and everything they had fought for — depended on it.”
Young did, and his family joined Hunter in hiding.
At that point, Baron began picking up the tab for
Hunter and Young, spending about $183,000 on planes, hotels and rental
houses as the unlikely couple jetted from Raleigh to Florida to Colorado
and California, the indictment said.
Baron also gave Young $10,000 in cash in an envelope marked, “Old Chinese saying: use cash, not credit cards!”
While Young and Hunter were fleeing the media, Edwards dropped out of the race on Jan. 30, 2008.
Edwards continued to deny that he was the father of
Hunter’s child. He also denied on national television that money was
paid to hush up the affair: “I’ve never asked anybody to pay a dime of
money, never been told that any money has been paid. Nothing has been
done at my request. So if the allegation is that somehow I participated
in the payment of money — that is a lie.”
The indictment also mentions an unnamed former
staffer who worked with Edwards to craft a statement in which Edwards
would admit he was the father of Hunter’s child, the indictment said.
Edwards told the former staffer that he knew during the campaign that Baron was paying to keep Hunter hidden from the media.
“Edwards further told the employee that this was a
huge issue and that for ‘legal and practical reasons’ it should not be
mentioned in the statement they were preparing,” according to the
indictment.
In recent months, Edwards’ lawyers have tried to
persuade prosecutors in the U.S. Justice Department’s Public Integrity
Section to drop the investigation. Those efforts ended with Friday’s
indictment, which starts an even tougher legal battle.
The Edwards legal team released a statement from former FEC chairman Scott E. Thomas, questioning the prosecution.
“A criminal prosecution of a candidate on these facts
would be outside anything I would expect after decades of experience
with the campaign finance laws,” Thomas said. “The Federal Election
Commission would not support a finding that the conduct at issue
constituted a civil violation much less warranted a criminal
prosecution.”
The key questions of law in the case are whether
payments to Hunter and Young were intended to keep Edwards’ 2008
presidential campaign alive, and whether Edwards knew about those
payments.
The payments for Hunter never touched campaign accounts and weren’t reported on campaign disclosure forms.
Prosecutors are alleging that the money was campaign
spending — intended to save the campaign by keeping Edwards’ affair with
Hunter secret — and thus an illegal use of campaign funds.
Edwards’ lawyers, on the other hand, say that the
money was intended merely to conceal the affair from Edwards’ late wife,
Elizabeth, and was not connected to the campaign. As such, they argue,
the payments weren’t illegal.
In his statement Friday, Thomas, who served as an FEC
commissioner for 20 years, said he based his opinion on facts as
presented most favorably to the government, including “that the payments
were motivated in part by a desire to elect Senator Edwards to (the
presidency).”
Thomas said he met with prosecutors in late April.
“These payments would not be considered to be either
campaign contributions or campaign expenditures within the meaning of
the campaign finance laws,” he said.
Investigators have been curious about Edwards’
relationship with Mellon, whom Edwards courted for financing during his
second failed bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, in 2008.
Baron, a former Dallas trial lawyer who was finance
chairman for the Edwards campaign, said before he died that he provided
financial support to Young and Hunter.
The saga that led to Friday’s charges began when
Hunter, a videographer, secured work with Edwards’ 2008 campaign in 2006
and 2007. According to campaign finance disclosures, she received
$114,000 to film Edwards’ travels across America and abroad to raise
awareness about poverty. Hunter’s “webisodes” were posted on the
Internet.
When Hunter got pregnant in 2007, her role in Edwards’ world shifted.
Edwards, a trial lawyer himself, was elected U.S.
senator from North Carolina as a political novice in 1998, defeating
incumbent Republican Lauch Faircloth. He chose not to seek re-election
in 2004, running for president instead. Eventual Democratic nominee John
Kerry chose him as his running mate that year.
A South Carolina native, Edwards lives in Orange County, N.C. His wife died of cancer last December.
———
(c) 2011, The News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.).
Visit The News & Observer online at http://www.newsobserver.com/.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
