Former North Carolina Democratic Sen. John Edwards, who also has run in 2004 and 2008 for the presidential nomination and was the 2004 vice presidential nominee under John Kerry, has admitted he had a 2006 affair with a staffer, Rielle Hunter. By all appearances his chief fundraiser and close personal friend, Dallas trial lawyer Fred Baron, paid her off to keep quiet about the affair.
Hunter had a baby girl in February, 2008, which it is claimed was fathered by another Edwards campaign staffer, Andrew Young, who is married and has chilren in that marriage.
Hunter took her name from her first husband, lawyer Alexander Hunter III, the son of the controversial former Boulder, Colorado district attonery, Alex Hunter. The elder Hunter was most famous for being unable to solve murder cases in his bailiwick, including the cases of Jon Benet Ramsey and the murder of actor Robert Redford's son's girlfriend. The elder Hunter was a classic limousine liberal Democrat, who fit right in with the jocularly-nicknamed Citizens Republic of Boulder, home of the ultra-liberal University of Colorado.
Edwards disclaims any knowledge of payments from Baron to Hunter, and says he will not discuss any aspect of the affair again. He could face criminal charges under federal campaign finance statutes, as his political action committee paid Hunter at least $28,000 to shoot web videos for his campaign, as well as the funds Baron sent her.
It has been like pulling teeth to get the seamy scandal out into the open. It has been well documented on the web for months, but only very recently did ABC News, then the Washington Post and then the New York Times run highly-sanitized versions of the story. There is ample evidence that the affair was public knowledge and reported on the web before Edwards' campaign crashed and burned, but the mainstream media ignored it.
It pays to be a trial lawyer who made millions suing everyone in sight. The liberal press, in addition to ideological bias in conspiring to keep the affair quiet, was cowed into fearing litigation if it dared publicize the elicit wrongdoing.
Taken by itself, the affair was bad enough--if nothing else, just because Edwards' wife Elizabeth has been fighting breast cancer for the past five years. The active coverup, financed with campaign funds and by the major donor Baron, puts it in the criminal category. But does anyone have the courage to prosecute it?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment