CHAPEL HILL (WTVD) — The Edwards house in Orange County is a house divided – divided by infidelity, and former presidential candidate John Edwards acknowledges federal investigators are now probing his affair with Rielle Hunter.
Frank Perry spent 22 years with the FBI and is familiar with political corruption cases. He’s now retired and works for a non-profit in downtown Raleigh called – the Foundation for Ethics in Public Service.
While the feds are not commenting on the investigation, Perry explained to Eyewitness News how the case will proceed.
“It is the FBI that makes a determination of that allegation, to see if it’s credible, specific and coherent enough to proceed,” he said. “I think many people wrongly believe US attorneys generate public corruption cases, but the initiation, the vetting, the working of the case, the FBI is driving that train and it’s done with a true abundance of caution, fairness, and you want to be as firm and fast as you are fair.”
In 2006 and 2007, Edwards’ political action committee paid Hunter $114,000 to produce videos of Edwards. Federal investigators are trying to figure out if those payments violated federal law.
Perry is not connected to the Edwards investigation, but says political corruption cases focus on a federal law – called “honest services fraud”.
“Honest services means that a public official has done something that deprives the citizens of the honest services they expect from public officials,” he explained.
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“It can take some time to build a case,” he said. “And [an] honest services case can take a lot of effort and can be extremely time consuming with respect to going through the financial records and following that money.”
While it appears the investigation is being conducted in Raleigh, Perry says political corruption cases have a lot of oversight – from both FBI headquarters in Washington and the Justice Department in Washington.
May 7, 2009
Fed investigation into “honest services fraud”
May 3, 2009
Investigators dig through records to see if donors’ money was used to cover up affair with campaign worker
Federal investigators are sifting through the records of money that helped John Edwards’ presidential campaign to determine if any was used to keep quiet his affair with Rielle Hunter.
Edwards, a Democrat and former U.S. senator, acknowledged the investigation to The News & Observer.
“I am confident that no funds from my campaign were used improperly,” Edwards said in a statement.
“However, I know that it is the role of government to ensure that this is true. We have made available to the United States both the people and the information necessary to help them get the issue resolved efficiently and in a timely matter. We appreciate the diligence and professionalism of those involved and look forward to a conclusion.”
Edwards declined to discuss the matter.
A review of Edwards’ campaign money will turn up a cluster of nonprofits, some not subject to the same rules of transparency as official campaign organizations.
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“This may be a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack,” said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of Open Secrets, a campaign watchdog group. “John Edwards is a leader in misleading the public.”
Campaign finance laws prohibit candidates from spending campaign money to pay for personal expenses they would have incurred had they not been running for office. But nonprofits created to support a candidate or his message have different requirements.
The Alliance for a New America, the group that received Mellon’s millions, was kept at arm’s length from Edwards, a requirement of campaign finance law. Nonprofits such as this, known as 527 groups, primarily finance media messaging that most often closely aligns with a particular candidate’s stance.
The alliance was launched by Nick Baldick, Edwards’ campaign manager in 2004. At least one of the donors, San Francisco attorney Jim Finberg, said he was advised the money would pay for media ads supporting universal health care in Iowa. He knew the group was linked to Edwards; by law, however, Edwards couldn’t be involved in the group’s activities.
The Center for Promise and Opportunity, a nonprofit organization allowed to shield donors’ identity but allowed some political expenditures, paid for much of Edwards’ early groundwork in New Hampshire and Iowa.
The organization’s statement of purpose filed along with its tax disclosures never mention Edwards. Edwards was the center’s honorary chairman, according to media reports in 2006.
“They play this charade. Refrain from saying they are a candidate, so they don’t have to follow the rules,” said Paul S. Ryan of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan group that monitors campaign finance issues. “They’re gaming the system. If they play carefully enough, they can avoid running afoul of the law.”
In 2006, Edwards traveled the nation, walking picket lines and talking to crowds about poverty and his regret in voting to fund the war in Iraq, travel paid for by the Center for Promise and Opportunity.
The center also paid for Edwards’ trips abroad, where he met with foreign leaders and visited developing nations plagued by squalor. Rielle Hunter was at his side filming.
April 3, 2009
Fed Grand Jury sitting on Edwards mistress pay-off
Multiple sources now confirm The ENQUIRER’s report that a federal grand jury is investigating possible misuse of presidential campaign funds by John Edwards to pay off his mistress.
U.S. Attorney George Holding revealed yesterday he “was not going to confirm or deny any investigation” regarding Edwards that was first reported by the ENQUIRER earlier this week.
A Federal grand jury did convene on Wednesday in Raleigh, North Carolina, according to multiple local reports. Grand jury proceedings are kept secret. Attorneys are liable for criminal prosecution if they discuss such investigations in public or to the press.
Prominent Raleigh defense attorney and John Edwards’ mentor Wade Smith declined to comment on whether he was representing Edwards before the grand jury investigation.
“I’m at a place where I cannot make any comment to confirm or deny,” Smith said. “I can’t say anything. It’s possible, at some later point, I can.”
The disgraced 2-time Presidential candidate began his career working for Wade Smith’s law firm and they are long time friends.
August 14, 2008
Lawyers’ Ties Hint at Extent of Hiding Edwards’s Affair
As tabloid reports of a sex scandal threatened former Senator John Edwards’s presidential campaign last December on the eve of the Iowa caucuses, two lawyers surfaced with written statements that appeared to exonerate the candidate.
One of them, Robert J. Gordon of New York, said that his client, Rielle Hunter, a pregnant 43-year-old filmmaker, was not carrying Mr. Edwards’s child. Shortly thereafter, the other lawyer, Pamela J. Marple of Washington, sent word that her client, Andrew Young, an Edwards campaign aide, was the baby’s father.
Seemingly issued independently of Mr. Edwards, the statements appeared to deflate the anonymously sourced reports of an Edwards tryst. But what went unnoticed was that the two lawyers shared an important connection to Mr. Edwards that suggests they were part of an orchestrated effort to protect him, one that is continuing even after he admitted last week that he had an affair with Ms. Hunter but denied that he fathered her child.
The lawyers are linked through Fred Baron, a wealthy Dallas lawyer and former finance chairman for the Edwards campaign who was a key player in the campaign’s response to the scandal. Mr. Gordon has worked with Mr. Baron on class-action personal injury cases, and Ms. Marple helped defend a lawsuit brought against both men and their law firms by an asbestos manufacturer.
After initially saying that he did not know how the lawyers were chosen to represent Ms. Hunter and Mr. Young, Mr. Baron acknowledged that he might have played a role.
The revelations of ties among the lawyers emerged through public records and interviews with people close to Mr. Edwards and Ms. Hunter, which suggested that their affair went on longer than Mr. Edwards admitted and that the effort to conceal it by Mr. Edwards’s inner circle was much more extensive than has been reported.
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August 8, 2008
Edwards Chair Denies Hush Money
Fred Baron, John Edwards’ campaign finance chairman and longtime confidante, told NBC News in telephone interviews, he has been providing financial assistance to both Andrew Young and Rielle Hunter.
Young is the married Edwards campaign staffer who has admitted to fathering Hunter’s child. Earlier today, Edwards admitted to also having an affair with Hunter.
Baron said he was personally upset with how the National Enquirer was harassing the two and helped them relocate out of North Carolina. He has continued to help them with their overhead.
Baron insisted Edwards never knew what Baron did for Young and Hunter; he believes Edwards didn’t even have an inkling that Baron was doing this.
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December 31, 2007
Edwards would ban 527s, but happy to take their money
Edwards had raised $30 million by the end of September, significantly trailing rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. At that point, the campaign decided to seek public funds.
Under the presidential financing system, candidates get matching funds for every donor’s contribution of up $250. If they accept the money, they must abide by spending limits in each primary and caucus state as well as an overall cap on primary spending. Those restrictions have prompted most of the leading candidates to decide to forgo the public money.
Edwards has so far spent more than $5 million on advertising in Iowa and New Hampshire. He’s also getting help from independent, mostly labor-financed groups that have drawn criticism from watchdog groups and from Obama. The groups, called “527″ organizations for the section of the IRS code that authorizes them, have been running ads supporting Edwards’ policies in Iowa during the closing days of the campaign there.
Edwards, who made his fortune as a trial lawyer with his wealth somewhere between $12.8 million and $60 million, has refused donations from political action committees and lobbyists and has cast himself as the candidate less connected to Washington special interests. But Obama and other critics say the 527 groups are simply special interests helping him in another guise. Though labor groups have supplied much of the financing, one of the donors is a 97-year-old heiress to the Mellon family fortune.
Edwards has offered a finely honed response, saying he opposes the 527 organizations, but is proud of having the support of unions.
“They’re not running any negative, no attack ads. This is just positive advertising,” he said of the groups Sunday on CBS. “But that aside, I think these 527s need to be banned. I didn’t want them running advertising, and I’ve continued to say that every time I’ve been asked. But I can’t stop these people. I don’t have control over them.”
December 22, 2007
Edwards bundler a lobbyist
Loyal Edwards Fundraiser Killed Ethanol Initiative In Wisc.
Scott Tyre, a Wisconsin lobbyist who sits on John Edwards’ national finance committee, has worked to kill ethanol mandates in Madison. In fact, Tyre’s own firm, Capitol Navigators, advertises his efforts to tank that bill next to quotes from longtime Edwards loyalists Ed Turlington and Nick Baldick praising Tyre’s “work ethic” and “brain power.”
“Scott is regarded as one of the top contract lobbyists at the Capitol. When it comes crunch time and you need votes as we did during the ethanol mandate debate in the 2005-06 session, Scott was one of the first persons I called for help. His contacts and lobbying skills are certainly one of the reasons we were able to kill the bill in the Senate.”
–Erin Roth, Executive Director of Wisconsin Petroleum Council/Division of the American Petroleum Institute
Tyre is an Edwards bundler, according to Public Citizen.
Edwards has said on the campaign trail that ethanol is one key to moving the country toward energy independence.
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But Tyre’s anti-ethanol efforts — his firm has also represented the American Petroleum Institute — contradict Edwards’ campaign trail pitch for expanded production of renewable energy sources. And Edwards, as we all know, slams lobbyists at every diner, community center, debate and school rally. It seems perplexing at best then that he’d have one on his team who is fighting his very policies.
December 3, 2007
Edwards vs. lobbyists: A posture, not a principle
JOHN EDWARDS has launched a Web site, Americabelongstous2008.com, to decry the influence of lobbyists and PACs. On it, he asks Democrats to pledge not to vote for a presidential candidate who has accepted campaign donations from either evil entity. To put it another way, he has asked Democrats to pledge not to vote for Sen. Hillary Clinton.
This is yet another Edwards attempt to disguise self-serving posturing as moral righteousness. (Did anyone believe his claim that he was accepting federal matching funds because it was the moral thing to do and not because Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were sucking up all the Democratic donor money before he could get to it?)
Edwards’ spiel against the “special interests” is as phony as his Cheshire cat smile. Edwards might not accept lobbyist money, but he accepts money from corporate executives and managers at firms that employ lobbyists. How is that any different from accepting the donations of the contractors (lobbyists) those business people hire to represent them in Washington?
Edwards’s self-serving class warfare rhetoric is getting tiresome. Someone should tell him. Maybe we can hire a lobbyist to do it.
The Union Leader
November 22, 2007
Money money money trips up Edwards’ message
Since his stint as the Democrats’ vice presidential candidate in 2004, the tension between Edwards’ private life and his politics has been growing. In recent years, Edwards, 54, has adopted a more populist tone at the same time he’s taken on more of the accoutrements of wealth.
That tension may be one reason that Edwards has struggled against Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois.
“I think it does hurt him, because it calls into question his sincerity,” said former South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Dick Hartpootlian, who backs Obama. “If you base your campaign on where you come from, the haircut, the corporate portfolio, all that is inconsistent with that.”
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As a lawyer, Edwards went for the big payoffs, making millions suing doctors, hospitals and corporations and building a net worth he’s reported at about $30 million. Edwards wasn’t an anti-poverty lawyer, and he did little pro bono work. He didn’t emphasize fighting poverty when he ran as a moderate in 1998, defeating Republican Sen. Lauch Faircloth, or during his six years in the Senate.
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But since his Senate election, he’s traded up to progressively tonier residences: a $3.8 million house near Embassy Row in Washington, a $5.2 million house in Georgetown and finally a $6 million house, which includes a full-size indoor basketball court, built in 2005 outside Chapel Hill.
Edwards also took a part-time consulting job with Fortress Investment Group of New York in October 2005. Fortress raises money from wealthy individuals and institutions, pools the cash in private equity or hedge funds and invests it in alternative ways – buying public companies and taking them private, for instance – to beat usual market returns.
With $43 billion under management, including $16 million of Edwards’ personal fortune, Fortress is among the major firms in its class. While Fortress was incorporated in Delaware, its hedge funds were incorporated in the Cayman Islands, allowing partners and investors to avoid or defer paying taxes. That’s a practice that Edwards frequently has criticized.
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November 19, 2007
100 percent about transparency?
Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, another Democratic candidate for president, has also gotten unwanted publicity from a bundler.
Michigan attorney Geoffrey Fieger and a partner were indicted in August on charges of breaking campaign laws for contributions made in 2004. They had raised $127,000 for Edwards, but are charged with reimbursing employees of their law firm, family members and others for the donations — effectively giving the money themselves in violation of contribution limits.
The major concern with bundling is about influence.
Bundlers’ work is usually closely tracked by the campaigns and “gives individuals a way to be much more important than their personal campaign contribution,” said Taylor Lincoln, the research director at the Congress Watch division of Public Citizen, which discloses known bundlers on its Web site, www.whitehouseforsale.org.
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“The public has no idea who the candidates are leaning on for these vast sums of money,” says Massie Ritsch, a spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics. “The person who gives $2,300 looks just like the person who has raised $200,000.”
Lawrence Norton, former general counsel for the FEC, said there is much more emphasis on these “uber-fundraisers” than ever before, in part because of new restrictions in how other political committees can raise money.
“From a regulatory perspective, what you have are lots of people who are really critical to the campaign but are not part of the campaign, and are not necessarily trained or educated in terms of what they can or cannot do,” said Norton, an attorney in the Washington office of Womble, Carlyle, Sandridge & Rice.
“Either they are tripping over campaign finance laws, or the campaign is exposed to criticism or potential violations because of these volunteers who are effectively their agents.”
Edwards released a list of 669 “solicitors” through the first three quarters of 2007. He releases the names of everyone who has collected money, regardless of amount.
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“This is 100 percent about transparency and electing someone who is open and honest to the presidency; that’s why we, unlike our opponents, release the names of everyone who fundraises for Senator Edwards,” his spokeswoman, Colleen Murray, said.
Lincoln disagrees with Edwards’ characterization of full disclosure because he does not reveal how much money each person is responsible for.
“You can disclose nobody or disclose everybody — they’re two different ways of being opaque,” he said.
McClatchy Newspapers 11/19/07
http://lakeexpo.com/articles/2007/11/19/top_news/08.txt
