The Enquirer has been the source on every story but one since the beginning of 2010 about John Edwards, and even that story was more about Elizabeth than it was about him. Now there's a fresh story that her video testimony will be damning in a court of law.
I don't know anything more about legal matters than what I watch on TV, but doesn't the defense have a right to cross-examine any witness? It will be interesting to see if any evidence like this actually sees the light of day.
Now that legitimate news sources are paying attention to the John Edwards situation, the Enquirer, the publication that pushed this story the hardest, is trying to stay ahead of the curve. They say Rielle Hunter has dumped his butt and will testify against him.
Couldn't happen to a more deserving guy, but she's not likely to have all the details on the money trail, and that's the part of the story that will decide the case.
Do you want to meet the woman behind all the scandal of John Edwards?
Well meet Rielle Hunter! Rielle Hunter is John Edwards' mistress to whom he had an elicit affair with and the two have a child together. She was once Edwards' campaign videographer. Interesting!
It must be summer, what's with all of these politicians having affairs, and children and mistresses falling out of the wood works? What's going on these days. Now it seems John Edwards, former presidential hopeful, is the latest to go down in a tale of sex, scandal, money and extramarital affairs!
A federal grand jury Friday indicted former North Carolina senator John Edwards for violating election laws by accepting nearly $1 million from supporters to cover up an extramarital affair during his 2008 presidential campaign. If convicted, Edwards faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine on the conspiracy charge. He faces five years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each count of accepting and receiving illegal campaign contributions and a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine on the charge of concealing the alleged illegal donations.
The case centers on whether money from two of his wealthy supporters used to conceal the affair and Edwards' out-of-wedlock daughter amounted to illegal campaign contributions because they helped advance his presidential ambitions.
In the 19-page indictment, federal prosecutors say Edwards accepted more than $925,000 from wealthy benefactors to conceal the affair and "protect and advance" his presidential campaign.
"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 campaign to divert personnel and resources away from campaign activities to respond to criticism and media scrutiny regarding the affair and pregnancy," the indictment says.
Edwards' mistress, Rielle Hunter, worked as a campaign videographer. Their daughter, Frances Quinn Hunter, was born in February 2008, several weeks after he ended his White House bid.
He initially denied having the affair, but in the summer of 2008 admitted to a relationship with Hunter. Last year, he acknowledged fathering her child, just days before the release of a tell-all book by ex-campaign aide Andrew Young.
Young, who had initially claimed paternity to protect his boss, has said Edwards solicited money from Rachel "Bunny" Mellon, the 100-year-old widow of banking heir Paul Mellon, to hide the affair. Young said Mellon sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to him, funneled through her decorator and sometimes concealed in boxes of chocolates.
"This was the arrangement the senator expected me to follow, so that he would have plausible deniability," Young wrote in his memoir, The Politician.
The Associated Press reports that the Justice Department may be finally getting around to indicting John Edwards on the charge that he used campaign money to hush up the paternity of his love child. They said the indictment could be coming down "within days".
Recall that the National Enquirer said he would be going to jail fifteen months ago. There is some difference between an indictment and a jail sentence and Edwards' lawyer is not going down without a fight.
Publication: National Enquirer Date: 18 April 2011
John Edwards is almost the exclusive property of the National Enquirer. There has been one story about his late wife Elizabeth in People which mentioned him as a minor character, but every other story is in The Flagship and all of them are negative.
Which is no more than he deserves.
Even so, I made a promise to keep track of every time a supermarket rag marked someone for death, and finally realized that when they say someone is suicidal, this is the absolute weakest death warning around. As such, I have started a new label called "Don't try suicide" and I went back over the past death warnings and added this label to the ones that mentioned suicide.
When one of the tabloid vultures says "xxx dying!", they have a 100% probability of being right eventually. But when they say "zzz suicidal!", the chance that they are correct is much closer to 0%. Still, John Edwards goes on the death watch list, though I expect he's going to be staying on this side of the lawn for the foreseeable future.
Publication: National Enquirer
