Edwards indicted on felony charges in affair cover-up

A FEDERAL grand jury indicted two-time presidential candidate John Edwards yesterday over $925,000 (€634,117) spent to keep his mistress and their baby in hiding during the peak of his 2008 campaign for the White House.

The case of USA vs Johnny Reid Edwards contains six counts, including conspiracy, four counts of illegal campaign contributions and one count of false statements.

The indictment said the payments were a scheme to protect Edwards’s White House ambitions. “A centrepiece of Edwards’s candidacy was his public image as a devoted family man,” the indictment said.

“Edwards knew that public revelation of the affair and the pregnancy would destroy his candidacy by, among other things, undermining Edwards’s presentation of himself as a family man and by forcing his campaign to divert personnel and resources away from other campaign activities to respond to criticism and media scrutiny regarding the affair and pregnancy,” the indictment added.

The indictment and an arrest warrant were filed in Greensboro, North Carolina, which is in the district where his campaign was headquartered.

An Edwards spokeswoman said she wasn’t aware of the filing and declined immediate comment.

The centrepiece of the investigation has long been the hundreds of thousands of dollars privately provided by two wealthy Edwards supporters — his former campaign finance chairman Fred Baron and Rachel “Bunny” Mellon, the 100-year-old widow of banking heir Paul Mellon. That money eventually went to keep mistress Rielle Hunter and her out-of-wedlock baby in hiding in 2007 and 2008, during the apex of the Democratic nomination campaign.

The indictment said the money was used to pay for Hunter’s living and medical expenses and for chartered airfare, luxury hotels and rental for a house in Santa Barbara, California, to keep her hidden from the public.