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.

-more

New York Times

Hubris Hypocrisy and Greed

John Edwards launched his slight public career — one Senate term, two presidential candidacies — with the money and reputation he made as a trial lawyer. Today he is the candidate of a small fraction of the electorate but a sizable portion of America’s trial lawyers. Edwards says Washington is “corrupt.” Well.

Within Edwards’ lucrative trial bar constituency, there has been a flurry of criminal indictments. Their target has been what Fortune magazine calls the law firm of Hubris Hypocrisy and Greed. (See Peter Elkind’s jaw-dropping report in the issue of Nov. 13, 2006.) The real name of the nation’s foremost securities class-action firm is Milberg Weiss.

It has been indicted as a “racketeering enterprise” that obstructed justice and committed perjury, bribery and fraud while collecting about $250 million in fees from about 250 cases using paid plaintiffs, which is illegal. Several of the firm’s members, past and present, also have been indicted.

Since 1965, the firm has won, often by tactics indistinguishable from extortion, $45 billion from corporations — more than $1 billion a year for plaintiffs claiming to have been cheated as investors. Plaintiffs firms such as Milberg Weiss are paid contingency fees — they are paid only if they win, but up to 30 percent of what is won. Mel Weiss, whose case is going to trial, and his former partner, Bill Lerach, who specialized in volatile stocks of Silicon Valley companies in the 1990s and is now going to jail, each pocketed — it would be strange to say they earned — more than $100 million in the 1990s. The firm itself has been charged with paying $11.4 million to three serial plaintiffs who testified in 180 cases over 25 years, claiming to have been repeatedly defrauded.

snip

Until Lerach pleaded guilty he was a fundraiser for Edwards, for whom he collected $64,000 from lawyers in the firm he founded after he had a falling out with Weiss. Remember this when next you hear Edwards’ populist riff about trial lawyers as white knights protecting little people.

Real Clear Politics 11/18/07
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/11/legal_troubles_mount_for_edwar.html

Edwards flies bundler’s private jet for 1/4 expense of Clinton

John Edwards, who raised $7.1 million for the quarter but spent $8.2 million, was spending at a rate of $1.17 for every dollar raised in the third quarter.One big savings for Mr. Edwards is his use of the private jet of Fred Baron, a trial attorney, who is allowed to charge the campaign discount rates. Mr. Edwards paid Mr. Baron $234,000 for the use of his jet. Mrs. Clinton used chartered jets, which cost more, and paid $1 million.

New York Times 8/22/07
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/22/us/politics/22spending.html

Edwards pot calling Clinton kettle crooked

Hillary Clinton raised big bucks at a Chinatown fund-raiser from donors who listed seemingly modest-paying jobs on contributor forms, prompting an angry exchange between John Edwards’ campaign and Team Clinton.The flap came after the Los Angeles Times reported people holding jobs such as dishwasher, server or chef made donations ranging from $500 to $2,300.The newspaper said it could not find one-third of the donors using property, telephone or business records.By mid-afternoon, David Bonior, Edwards’ campaign manager, issued a statement that “many Clinton campaign contributions are raising eyebrows again.”Howard Wolfson, a top Clinton adviser, said the campaign does not “ethnically profile donors.”

He acknowledged the campaign flagged a number of questionable donations based on occupations and amounts. It returned $7,000 it couldn’t confirm was legally given, he said.

As for the Edwards rebuke, Wolfson replied, “If Mr. Edwards is so concerned about campaign finance reform, he should give back the contributions he got from Geoffrey Fieger.”

In August, Fieger was indicted on charges of conspiring to make more than $125,000 in illegal donations to Edwards’ 2004 presidential campaign. Team Edwards said it will give the money to charity if Fieger is convicted.

New York Daily News 10/20/07
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_report/2007/10/20/2007-10-20_hillarys_chinatown_fundraiser_draws_edwa.html”>LINK

New Campaign Favorite Spins More Cash, Abuse; Lawyers Back Edwards

Donor Bundling Emerges As Major Ill in ‘08 Race

WASHINGTON — The bundling of political donations once was an innocuous play in the game book of Washington political operatives. Now, the fund-raising practice has grown so widespread, and some of its practitioners so brazen, that bundling has become the chief source of abuse in the American campaign-finance system.

snip

Bundlers raised at least $109 million for the presidential candidates during the first nine months of the 2008 campaign. That figure is based on the number of bundlers that Public Citizen says raised money for each campaign, multiplied by the minimum amount that campaigns and fund-raisers say they are required to bring in to be considered bundlers. The actual share contributed by bundlers is likely higher, because top practitioners raise far more than the minimum — nearly $1 million in Mr. Hsu’s instance.

The funds bundled so far this election cycle represent at least 28% of the record $379 million raised overall for this campaign. By comparison, figures compiled by Public Citizen show bundlers accounted for 18% of funds raised in the 2004 contest, and 8% in 2000.

A name-by-name analysis of bundlers reveals that this year’s operatives are drawn from the same pools as fund-raisers past. Lawyers account for about 27% of the bundlers named by Public Citizen, according to an analysis of that list conducted for the Journal by the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics. Another 11% work in securities and investment and 8% in real estate. Lobbyists account for about 3% of these fund-raisers. The Center for Responsive Politics said it couldn’t determine the occupations of 15% of the bundlers named by Public Citizen.

snip

“Bundling by its very nature has the potential to be coercive,” says Craig McDonald, the executive director of Texans for Public Justice, a nonprofit organization that tracks bundlers for Mr. Bush. “The money often comes from people who don’t want anything except to please their boss.”

snip

Mr. Edwards has been burned twice by fund-raisers at law firms, who account for at least 54% of his bundlers, according to the analysis conducted for the Journal. The Edwards campaign considers anyone who raises money outside of their families a bundler.

This year, in Michigan, attorney Geoffrey Fieger was indicted for illegally reimbursing employees for $127,000 in bundled campaign contributions to Mr. Edwards’s 2004 presidential campaign. Prosecutors alleged that Mr. Fieger and a law partner reimbursed 60 employees and associates for donations to the campaign by disguising the reimbursements as bonuses or other payments.

Last year, the Federal Election Commission fined the Edwards campaign $9,500 as part of a separate instance of straw donations from a Little Rock, Ark., law firm. The FEC also fined the law firm and partner Tab Turner $50,000 for reimbursing low-level employees for donations to Mr. Edwards. Mr. Turner says he has settled with the FEC. The Edwards campaign declined to comment.

Wall Street Journal 10/18/07
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119267248520862997.html?mod=politics_first_element_hs

Milberg Weiss Legal Scandal and John Edwards

Last year, the firm was indicted on federal charges of fraud and bribery. But the political partnership has not been entirely severed. Since the indictment, 26 Democrats around the country, including four presidential candidates, have accepted $150,000 in campaign contributions from people connected to Milberg Weiss, according to state and federal campaign finance records. And some Democrats have taken public actions that potentially helped the firm or its former partners.The recent contributors include current and former Milberg partners who had either been indicted or were widely reported to be facing potential criminal problems when they wrote their checks. One of them, William S. Lerach, was a fund-raiser for John Edwards’s presidential campaign until his guilty plea last month. Melvyn I. Weiss, a founder of the firm, gave the maximum $4,600 to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in June. Other firm members contributed to the presidential campaigns of Senators Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr.

snip

In the current campaign, the race for cash has led to several embarrassments for the Democrats, including the indictment of a trial lawyer, Geoffrey Fieger, who was accused of using straw donors to make illegal contributions to Mr. Edwards’s 2004 presidential campaign, and the arrest of Norman Hsu, a businessman accused of fraud who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Mrs. Clinton.

In addition to the kickback charges in the Milberg Weiss case, federal agents have investigated allegations that the firm funneled campaign contributions through plaintiffs and expert witnesses in the 1990s, said two lawyers familiar with the inquiry. The guilty plea entered by Mr. Lerach hinted at that, but it also specified that prosecutors would not pursue campaign finance violations, in exchange for Mr. Lerach’s admission that he had conspired to obstruct justice by concealing the kickbacks.

snip

More recently, Mr. Edwards, a trial lawyer who became wealthy pursing personal injury cases, joined labor unions and consumer groups last May in pressing securities regulators to intervene in a lawsuit against banks brought by Mr. Lerach on behalf of Enron investors. His campaign said Mr. Edwards’s actions had nothing to do with Mr. Lerach, and were consistent with the candidate’s longstanding defense of working people.

Still, Mr. Edwards’s willingness to be seen doing anything that could benefit Mr. Lerach and allowing him to raise money provided fodder for critics. At the time the Edwards campaign took on Mr. Lerach as a fund-raiser, it was already widely reported that Mr. Lerach, who left Milberg Weiss in 2004, was one of the unnamed co-conspirators cited in court documents related to the firm’s indictment.

In all, Mr. Edwards collected about $16,000 from people connected to Milberg Weiss, including Mr. Lerach and two other former Milberg Weiss lawyers who had joined him at his new firm, Patrick J. Coughlin and Keith F. Park. Federal authorities agreed not to prosecute them as part of a plea deal with Mr. Lerach. (Mr. Lerach also raised $64,000 for Mr. Edwards from members of his new firm who were not named in the Milberg case.)

“With Edwards, he has associated himself with people in his campaign that don’t represent the face that even the trial lawyers want to put forward to the country,” said Walter K. Olson, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research group, who has written extensively on the American legal system.

New York Times 10/18/07
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/18/us/politics/18milberg.html?ref=politics

Edwards being chauffered through the air by bundler

In addition to convincing CEOs to open their wallets, the candidates are also eager to score rides on their corporate jets. Private jets are as much a part of the American upper-class landscape as a sports car is for German business executives. The American Porsche is made by Learjet or Gulfstream.

Many of the presidential candidates are having themselves chauffeured through the air like tourists taking a taxi through the streets of New York. None of them is as fond of flying as John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator and now one of the Democratic presidential candidates. Fred Baron, a prominent attorney and friend, has provided Edwards with the use of his Hawker 800.

Spiegel Online 10/9/07
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,510248,00.html

Edwards: Limit Frivolous Lawsuits

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, who made his fortune as a trial lawyer, says attorneys should have to show their medical malpractice cases have merit before filing them.

He also said attorneys with a history of frivolous suits should be barred from filing new cases.

Edwards’ proposal is similar to “certificates of merit” laws that have been adopted in several states in recent years. Those laws usually require that an independent doctor assert the validity of a malpractice case before it is filed.

Edwards also said that while reducing malpractice lawsuits, as many have advocated, is a good idea, it won’t significantly affect health care costs.

The Associated Press

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g2256WHmHfmTC9KGk67Luy9UD75A

Bundler badness

Democrat John Edwards’s list of bundlers includes well-known fellow trial lawyer William S. Lerach, who raised $80,000 from his family and law firm partners for the candidate after a government probe had begun of Lerach’s wrongdoing, campaign aides confirmed yesterday. Lerach pleaded guilty this week to a conspiracy charge, prompting Edwards to announce that he will give back Lerach’s personal donations but not the money Lerach raised from others.

snip

In recent weeks, Edwards has sharply criticized a “corroded and corrupt” Washington system in which politicians raise money from special interests, which then seek their help on government matters. His campaign’s latest statement on that subject came on Tuesday, the day of Lerach’s plea deal. Top strategist Joe Trippi sent out a mass e-mail criticizing Clinton’s campaign for hosting a fundraising event with companies and lobbyists seeking the government’s multibillion-dollar homeland security business.

“Too many in office have fallen under the spell of campaign money at any cost — and do not see that when they defend the system, they are protecting those that have rigged the game that puts corporate profits ahead of the interests of working Americans,” Trippi wrote.

In May, Edwards issued a statement urging the Securities and Exchange Commission to weigh in with the Supreme Court on behalf of an effort by Lerach’s clients — who had invested in Enron — to sue banks associated with the energy giant. “The question for all Americans is whether their government will be on the side of those big banks or regular families,” Edwards said in a statement released by his presidential campaign. Lerach posted the statement on his law firm’s Web site.

Edwards’s campaign declined to discuss how much it knew about Lerach’s legal problems while Lerach raised money. Campaign officials also said they do not consider the statement about the Enron case a favor to a major donor and fundraiser.

“This position is consistent with John Edwards’s long-standing support for protecting the retirement savings of middle-class families and is shared by many others, including the New York Times editorial page, Securities and Exchange Commission, Senate Banking Committee Chair Chris Dodd, and a coalition of consumer groups, to name a few,” Edwards spokeswoman Colleen Murray said.

Lerach is the second Edwards fundraiser to face legal troubles in the past year. Lawyer Geoffrey Fieger was indicted in August on federal charges of conspiring to route more than $125,000 in illegal contributions to Edwards’s 2004 presidential bid. Fieger has pleaded not guilty.

Edwards’s campaign has said it knew nothing about Fieger’s alleged scheme and has cooperated with the Justice Department. But the campaign has declined to refund the donations in question, waiting for the outcome of Fieger’s trial to avoid influencing jurors. If he is convicted, the campaign has said it plans to send his donations to charity.

Washington Post 9/20/07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/19/AR2007091902508.html?hpid=topnews

Edwards pressured SEC on behalf of leading fundraiser

Though his former law firm came under indictment more than a year ago and he himself appeared likely to face criminal charges, prominent trial lawyer William S. Lerach slipped past the vetting of John Edwards’ presidential campaign and was permitted to raise large amounts of money for the Democrat’s 2008 bid.Lerach, his family and members of his new law Lerach Coughlin law firm accounted for nearly $78,000 in donations to Edwards’ campaign in the first half of this year, making the trial lawyer one of the North Carolina Democrat’s leading “bundlers” of contributions.

In the midst of that fundraising, Lerach negotiated behind the scenes for a plea deal that was consummated on Tuesday and will send him to federal prison for at least 12 months on a conspiracy charge involving his past legal work as partner in the Milberg Weiss law firm.

Through it all, Edwards stood by his fellow trial lawyer and even took an action this spring that was helpful to his longtime financial supporter in a government matter.

In May, Edwards used the bully pulpit of his presidential campaign to publicly pressure the Securities and Exchange Commission not to oppose Lerach’s new law firm in a Supreme Court case over whether Lerach’s lawsuits could proceed against banks on behalf of investors who lost millions in the collapse of energy giant Enron.

“The question for all Americans is whether their government will be on the side of those big banks or regular families,” Edwards said in a statement released by his presidential campaign that was trumpeted on the Web site of Lerach’s law firm.

All of this transpired while Edwards campaigned against what he calls a “corroded and corrupt” Washington system in which politicians raise money from special interests who then seek their help on government matters. To make his point, Edwards campaign is refusing any donations from lobbyists registered in Washington.

snip

Trippi’s attack made no mention of Lerach, the Edwards’ bundler, or the fact that Lerach had just reached a plea deal in a scheme prosecutors alleged involved kickback payments to plaintiffs in class action lawsuits he and his former law firm brought.

Lerach and his former law partner Melvyn I. Weiss were notified in the summer of 2005 that they had become targets in that lengthy criminal investigation, meaning they were likely to be indicted, according to lawyers involved in the case.

Court papers say that they employed the scheme for more than two decades in 150 cases that brought their firm more than $200 million in fees.

snip

Edwards campaign said it donated Lerach’s personal donations to charity yesterday after his guilty plea, but isn’t returning the money he raised from others.

As for the statement Edwards issued favorable to Lerach’s lawsuits earlier this year, Edwards spokesoman Colleen Murray said: “This position is consistent with John Edwards’ longstanding support for protecting the retirement savings of middle class families and shared by many others, including the New York Times editorial page, Securities and Exchange Commission, Senate Banking Committee Chair Chris Dodd, and a coalition of consumer groups, to name a few.”

Lerach is the latest bundler in the 2008 race whose background has raised questions about how carefully campaigns are vetting those who collect their checks.

Washington Post 9/19/07
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2007/09/19/lawyer_in_plea_deal_was_edward.html?hpid=topnews