Ex-aide's wife breaks down on witness stand
Andrew Young, former aide to former Sen. John Edwards, and his wife, Cheri, on March 12, 2010. / File,AP Photo/Sara D. Davis
Updated: 2:39 p.m. ET
(AP) GREENSBORO, N.C. -- The wife of an ex-aide to John Edwards broke down on the witness stand Monday as she recounted how the candidate asked the couple to hide an affair he was having and justified using wealthy donors' money to do it.
Testifying at Edwards' campaign corruption trial, Cheri Young said she huddled around a phone in her Chapel Hill home with her husband, Andrew Young, and Edwards' pregnant mistress, Rielle Hunter.
On the call, Edwards emphasized the need to preserve his campaign and keep the affair from his wife, Elizabeth, Cheri Young said. It was a couple weeks before the 2008 Iowa caucuses, and two suspicious tabloid reporters had already tracked Hunter from a doctor's appointment to the Youngs' home.
Edwards made the plan sound "as if it was for the good of the country," Cheri Young said.
Asked by a prosecutor why she went along with it, Young put her hands together, pressed them to her chin and bowed her head as if in prayer. As she began to weep, U.S. District Court Judge Catherine C. Eagles dismissed the jury to give her time to compose herself.
About 25 feet away, Edwards sat back in his chair and put two fingers to his pursed lips. As Young dabbed her tears with a tissue, the former U.S. Senator glanced at his watch.
Once the jury returned, Young answered the question.
"I felt like everything had been dumped in my lap," she said. "Everybody was on board but me. ... I didn't want the campaign to explode and for it to be my fault. I decided to live with a lie."
During the call, Edwards suggested that it would only be a one-day story if Andrew Young took responsibility for the baby.
"'Nobody cares about two staffers having an affair,"' Young recalled Edwards saying.
Hunter had earlier been paid as a videographer by one of the organizations linked with Edwards, who is accused of deliberately using money from two wealthy donors to hide Hunter as he sought the White House in 2008.
Edwards has pleaded not guilty to six counts related to campaign-finance violations. He faces up to 30 years in prison and $1.5 million in fines if convicted on all counts.
At issue are payments from a wealthy Texas lawyer, Fred Baron, who served as Edwards' campaign- finance chairman and an elderly heiress, Rachel "Bunny" Mellon. Andrew Young, who testified last week under an immunity agreement, has acknowledged that he used for himself about $1 million of $1.2 million in payments from the two donors.
Earlier in her testimony, Cheri Young said she had doubts about taking the "Bunny money" and using it to cover up the affair. She said Edwards hatched the plan to have her deposit the money into an account controlled by her and her husband. Concerned about violating the federal $2,300 limit on individual campaign contributions, Young said she reluctantly agreed after insisting on hearing Edwards himself say the scheme was legal.
"I heard Mr. John Edwards tell me on the phone that he checked with the campaign lawyers and that this was legal," she said.
Cheri Young took the witness stand late Friday after a full week of testimony by her husband, a former fundraiser and close aide to Edwards.
Though Andrew Young testified last week that the couple ended up keeping about $1 million of the money provided by two wealthy donors, the couple also paid to support the pregnant mistress out of their account, paying for her medical care, a BMW, a $2,700-a-month rental house and a monthly allowance of thousands of dollars in cash.
Cheri Young said she agreed to handle the money because if the public found out about Edwards' affair with Hunter, the campaign and her husband's job were in danger.
"I cannot tell you how disgusted I was. Why me? This was my husband's fight," she said. "Now I had to fix it."
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On the numbers: it sounds as though Bunny Mellon kicked in about $925,000 and Baron added roughly $250; hence, $1,175,000 total. It appears that payments to and expenses for Rielle Hunter ran to something between $200,000 and $250,000. That suggests that the Youngs "kept" just under $1 million.
Elizabeth Edwards was an admirable and classy lady, and she deserved much better than she got from her "pretty boy" husband. But it's not against the law to be a jerk....
A note on numbers: it appears that Bunny Mellon kicked in roughly $925,000 and John Baron paid roughly $250,000; hence, $1,175,000 total. It sounds like payments to and expenses for Rielle Hunter came to something between $200,000 and $250,000. So what the Youngs "kept" is something close to $1 million.
Was John Edward trying to preserve his political viability as well as to keep his infidelity from his long-suffering wife? Sure. Does that fact turn this money into "campaign funds"? I don't think so!
I guess ya gotta look good as your life gets flushed down the drain
Oh ya that works
Money is so important for war profiteering...but we dare not look at what we may find.
But the moral failings of a candidate who lost an election, unlike the ones who REQUIRED a supreme court order to insure their election...is somehow more important?
Get a grip. As long as you are willing to look at moral failings in a relationship, you will never see the horizon of shame our own leaders have brought to our pre-emptive war on Iraq, the billions spent for NOTHING as to Al Qaeda there, and the deaths of both our troops and the civilian population there over fictitious WMDs. Where is the War Crimes Court? Please remember the men who did the war REFUSED to consider signator status for the US to the very world organization responsible for addressing those crimes. Then we perpetrated a few of our own. Thanks for IGNORING the biggest story of the new century: American War Criminals.