Prosecutors called a once-trusted aide of former US senator John Edwards to the witness stand on Monday as they opened their criminal case against the former vice presidential candidate on charges of violating campaign finance laws to cover up an extramarital affair.
Andrew Young is the linchpin of the government’s case against Edwards, a former Democratic party star who faces allegations that he masterminded a conspiracy to use about US$1 million in secret payments from two wealthy donors to help hide his pregnant mistress as he campaigned for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 2008.
Young and Edwards were so close that when Edwards got his mistress pregnant in 2007, the married Young publicly claimed paternity of his boss’ unborn child.
“We were just North Carolina boys and had a lot in common,” Young testified.
Edwards, 58, has pleaded not guilty to six criminal counts related to alleged violations of federal campaign finance laws stemming from accepting money in excess of the US$2,300 legal limit for individual contributions. Federal law defines campaign contributions as money given to influence the outcome of a US election.
“It was not just a marriage on the line,” prosecutor David Harbach said in his opening statement at the trial in Greensboro, North Carolina. “If the affair went public it would destroy his chance of becoming president, and he knew it ... He made a choice to break the law.”
Edwards, a former North Carolina State senator, stared intently at Young as his former confidant testified. In nearly two hours of talking about Edwards, Young never looked in his direction.
For Edwards and his defense team, destroying Young’s credibility is key to their strategy.
They allege that much of the money at issue in the case was siphoned off by Young and his wife to pay for a US$1.5 million house finished in 2008.
“Follow the money,” defense lawyer Allison Van Laningham urged jurors in her opening statement. “John Edwards did not get any of this money. Not one cent.”
Edwards’ lawyers contend the payments were gifts from friends intent on keeping the candidate’s wife from finding out about the affair.
Elizabeth Edwards died in December 2010 after battling cancer.
A key issue will be whether Edwards knew about the payments made on his behalf by his national campaign finance chairman, the late Texas lawyer Fred Baron, and campaign donor Rachel “Bunny” Mellon, a now-101-year-old heiress and socialite.
Each had already given Edwards’ campaign the maximum US$2,300 individual contribution.
Edwards denies having known about the money, which paid for private jets, luxury hotels and then-mistress Rielle Hunter’s medical care.
Prosecutors will seek to prove he sought and directed the payments to cover up his affair, protect his public image as a “family man” and keep his presidential hopes viable.
Young testified about first meeting Hunter as she traveled with Edwards in 2006. That same year, Young first spoke with Mellon and put her in touch with Edwards.
The Youngs later invited the pregnant Hunter to live in their home and embarked with her on a cross-country odyssey as they sought to elude tabloid reporters trying to expose the candidate’s extramarital affair.
Edwards and Young eventually had a falling out and the former aide wrote an unflattering tell-all book, titled The Politician.
After years of adamant public denials, Edwards acknowledged paternity of Hunter’s daughter, Frances Quinn Hunter, in 2010. The girl, now four, lives with her mother.
It has not yet been decided whether Edwards, a former trial lawyer once renowned for his ability to charm jurors, will testify in his own defense.
Before the jury entered the courtroom on Monday, US District Court Judge Catherine Eagles disclosed that Young had called three other witnesses in the last two weeks.
Eagles ruled that lawyers for Edwards could mention the improper contact with jurors in opening statements on Monday, but barred them from using the term “witness tampering” or telling the jury that Young had a one-night stand with one of the other witnesses in 2007.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not