I’m not a lawyer but this is ridiculous:
Mr. Edwards’s decision to mount what his lawyer called “a vigorous defense” sets the stage for a future trial, with the already protracted case — Mr. Edwards first publicly confessed to the affair in August 2008 — likely to remain in the public eye for a few more years.
It is also likely to become rather messy as Mr. Edwards’s defense acknowledges that he tried to conceal the affair but says he did not do so for the political purpose of maintaining his candidacy, as the government alleges. Rather, Mr. Edwards argues that he was trying to conceal it for personal reasons — to hide it from his wife.
Yeah, he didn’t think having the public know about his love-child would be a problem for his candidacy. I know he doesn’t have an alternative defense, but sometimes you just gotta take your lumps and cop a plea bargain.
Hunh? How does this buy him any wiggle room on the charge of misusing campaign funds to buy off his mistress?
It’s how the government is defining campaign money that is at issue. Edwards says that wealthy donors gave him money to hide the affair from his wife. Thus, private money.
Government says the money was to protect his campaign and should be considered illegally large political donations.
Well, the DoJ prosecutors say the money was a campaign donation.
FEC officials, on the other hand, say that they never would have treated this money as a campaign donation. The former Chairman of the FEC, for instance, is now testifying that this wasn’t campaign money, but a personal gift.
Whether hiding the mistress would also have been good for Edwards’ campaign isn’t the standard; the standard here is Edwards’ state of mind – that he viewed the coverup primarily in terms of his campaign.
Good luck proving that. They should be charging him with not reporting the money on his income tax filing, not for a campaign finance violation.
He is an idiot. I hope the dumbass goes to prison.
Imagine if he had won the nomination. Could we have gone from VP Cheney to VP Palin?
I have imagined it!
So, having it concealed from the public as well was only a bonus?
Strangely reminds of the one about having a boy and only having to worry about one penis vs. having a girl and having to worry about every penis in the world.
So, everyone is still pretty angry at him, huh? Not hard to see why, I guess. I have a vestige of sympathy for him given the terrible things he has experienced (loss of child and wife). And I never thought he was insincere in his policy positions as a Senator and candidate – I think he genuinely believed in the “Two Americas” vision and all that. But the risks at which he selfishly put the Democratic party, and thus the country, are very, very difficult to forgive.
Wake me up when Ensign is indicted.
I’m late to this thread, but my understanding was that Ensign’s parents paid off his mistress. Ensign did not use campaign funds. he attempted to get his mistress’ husband a job using his clout as Senator, but the exchange of money was between Ensign’s parents on his behalf and NOT campaign money.
The point isn’t that Ensign committed the same crimes. It’s that he, or his parents, committed crimes at all. Which he. or they, did. Just another case of IOKIYAR.
To be honest, this looks like a dumb case. It all hinges on some broad interpretation of the term “campaign contribution,” from what I’ve read (admittedly not much) so far. Which hinges on Edwards’s motive.
I mean, Good Christ, you can file this but not the CDO-Squared case against Goldman-Sachs?
For real. I mean, when did the “money is fungible” argument cease to exist?
When they wrote the definition of a campaign donation into federal law.
No, not every dime anyone gives to a candidate is a campaign donation. If Edwards’ friend had bought him a car, would that have been a campaign donation? How about if he bought him lunch? How about if Edwards had a job and was being paid a salary?
Even the Feds’ indictment doesn’t rely on the claim “money is fungible.”
I agree. Like everyone I have no sympathy for Edwards, but this smells like another case of stretching the law to catch a famous person.
We all remember how they got Al Capone, on tax evasion, which no one objected to but at the same time everyone knew that the charges and the sentence were really for his other criminal actions. More recently you have the case of Martha Stewart — they needed to get SOMEONE to be the fall guy for the Enron/Worldcom disasters and she was the only prominent Democrat they could nail.
Who knows, the jury might convict anyway and based on that risk Edwards probably should plea bargain. But I wish all the effort that was put into investigating Edwards breaking of campaign laws had been put into something that might actually help society — like investigating electronic voting or the illegal connections between Bush/Rove and the Swift Boaters.
he’s trying to prove. Seriously.
When a court indicts someone, they either plead guilty or try to prove that the state has misjudged the evidence or the law. He is obviously trying to prove the latter and clear his name. It might be a quixotic quest, but he has the Constitutional right to mount a defense.
But I understand your point. I also understand that this trial is likely to be going on during Presidential primary season, raising images of other scandalous Democrats (cough, Bill Clinton).
So even if it is not booked and recorded as a campaign contribution, it’s a campaign contribution.
I would love to see that legal standard broadly applied. And not just to Democrats.
The Ensign case is premised on something entirely different. I don’t think you can draw equivalencies between them.
However, there are a large number of cases (which lack the salaciously sex scandal overtones) that would fall into a broader definition.
I think it would be easier if he ate a gun and left us behind.
Isn’t his intent here to get in front of a jury and blubber on about his dead wife and kid? Absolutely no shame. He will go full on Swaggart – I bet he even gets born again. He made a career of crassly manipulating juries. Why stop now?
How many of y’all supported this transparently obvious piece of shit when he was Wonder White Bread Boy, The Saviour Of The Union? Seems to me that he was all over the leftiness blogosphere with his pressed jeans and narcissist’s hairdo.
Shmoon Boy.
Now he’s just another asshole.
But then?
HOO boy!!! He was some hip shit, eh?
I pinned him from the getgo, thus I have every right to say this.
Y’all?
I seem to remember…not so much.
WTFU.
AG
I didn’t like him for the get-go because he was already a loser. I also got tired of him going on and on about his father in a mill to beef up his liberal creds. Stfu already; you’re a rich white lawyer from the South.
I support truth-tellers like Mike Gravel.
Yup.
I will never forget his announcement/press conference/photo op.
What is wrong with this picture?
It is false.
He looks like one of those dress-up dolls for children.
Liberal Larry
Had he walked into any working class bar of any sociocultural type whatsoever after the shift ended, the workers would have made him as full of shit about 3 seconds after they saw him.
From the top down:
1-The hair is wrong.
2-The expression is wrong.
3-The color of the shirt is wrong.
4-A button down collar!!!??? Please. You knew right there that he was politically and socially color blind.
5-The hands are wrong. Never touched anything harder than an expensive watch.
7-A beeper? Lord!!!
And I won’t even get into the choice of using black kids and a rundown building as a backdrop.
But the leftinesses?
They were all over him!
The “Anybody but Hillary” crowd, mostly. Plus those who thought that a brownish man with an African/Muslim name couldn’t be sold to the American people.
Politically deaf, dumb and blind.
Edwards and his supporters.
And now…bet on it…the ones who are railing about this “scandal?” Betcha it’s 80%-90% the same fools who wanted him to be preznit.
America.
Gotta love it.
Politics.
Politics and money/power.
Gotta love ’em both.
Power attracts lame motherfuckers.
Edwards?
Just a another drip in a barrel of rotten apples.
The so-called “politcally aware?”
Just a bunch of rotten apple eaters, mostly.
The rotten apple fanbase.
So it goes. Just as it’s always been.
Later…
AG
P.S. Read my sig. There lies a solution to the problem.
Dissolve the union between yourself and the State
What if they gave a war and no one came?
What if they held an election and no one voted?
What if they ran a news program a war and no one watched?
What if something like…
…actually happened?
What if?
That’s what.
Bet on that as well.
remember when he was pimped as the ‘ Safe, Southern White Male?’
I still shudder when I think about it.
Remember when people actually believed pimps?
Oh.
It ain’t over yet.
Not by a long shot.
Sarah Palin.
As false as John Edwards.
Only more dangerous.
Bet on it.
AG
Personally I think the government’s case is ridiculous. Central to the case is the argument that being a devoted family man was part of the image Edwards was putting out there and that therefore it was of political importance to him to hide his affair. And that concern not only makes spending the money a campaign expenditure, it apparently makes the money used a campaign contribution.
Say what?