By

KIM SEVERSON

April 26, 2012

GREENSBORO, N.C. — Andrew Young, the onetime top campaign aide and close friend of former Senator John Edwards, will return to the stand on Thursday morning, and Mr. Edwards’s defense lawyers are expected to continue their withering cross-examination of him as part of Mr. Edwards’s federal corruption trial.

Mr. Young, the chief witness for the prosecution, has spent much of the week describing the expensive and elaborate lengths to which Mr. Edwards went to spend time with Rielle Hunter, the woman with whom he had an affair that produced a child and to hide the relationship from his wife and the public.

On Wednesday, after spending more than two days responding to the gentle questioning of government prosecutors, Mr. Young received a rough introduction to Abbe Lowell, a highly sought-after criminal defense lawyer, who spent the afternoon looking for opportunities to pick Mr. Young apart.

Mr. Lowell called Mr. Young a liar and accused him of seeking to make himself indispensible to Mr. Edwards and his family so that Mr. Young could ride alongside as Mr. Edwards — a two-time presidential candidate — reached for the White House.

That plan, which included Mr. Young claiming paternity of Mr. Edwards’s illegitimate child in an effort to avoid a scandal, was financed by nearly $1 million from two wealthy Edwards supporters.

Whether that money was used to influence Mr. Edwards’s run for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, or was merely an effort to help him hide the affair from his wife, is at the heart of the six charges he faces.

If convicted on all counts, Mr. Edwards could be sentenced to 30 years in prison and $1.5 million in fines.

Although Mr. Edwards had spent much of the previous two days at his trial speaking quietly to his lawyers at the defense table, writing notes, or sitting back in his chair looking down, he stared intently at Mr. Young on Wednesday when it was his former aide’s turn under fire.

After court, Mr. Edwards walked outside and for the first time made a comment loud enough for the TV cameras that line the walkway to pick up.

“Oh, the sun is out in more ways than one,” he said

Mr. Young, on the other hand, has presented a less comfortable mien. He has walked stiffly in and out of court each day, and has made a point of not looking around the courtroom while on the stand. Instead, he has peered straight ahead when not focused on pieces of evidence he is presented to study.

Throughout Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Lowell honed in on inaccuracies in a book Mr. Young wrote about his time with Mr. Edwards, from Mr. Young’s national media appearances, and from a paid speech made by Mr. Young, challenging Mr. Young over even the smallest contradiction.

Did he leave his job with Mr. Edwards’s Senate office because he was unhappy in Washington or because he was bad at it? Did he first meet Ms. Hunter at an airport, as he asserted in earlier testimony, or at a hotel, or perhaps at a Dave Matthews concert? And how much did he really know about the tense triangle involving Ms. Hunter, Mr. Edwards, and his wife, Elizabeth Edwards, who died of breast cancer in 2010?

“Didn’t you purposely exaggerate so many of these stories to tell a better story about yourself?” Mr. Lowell asked.

Mr. Young, who has been granted immunity in exchange for testifying, turned from a cooperative, if not subdued, witness for the prosecution into one whose refrains were characterized by “I don’t recall,” and “I would be guessing, sir.”

By the end of the day, Mr. Lowell suggested that the Edwards-Young relationship was akin to a love affair, and that Mr. Young was the political version of a scorned lover.

According to Mr. Lowell, Mr. Young had ingratiated himself into Mr. Edwards’s life for personal gain and prestige. And then Mr. Edwards had turned his back on him.

“You really hate him, don’t you?” Mr. Lowell asked.

“I have mixed feelings,” Mr. Young responded.

Earlier in the week, Mr. Young described to the court how he and Mr. Edwards had found money from two wealthy campaign donors to financially support Ms. Hunter so their affair could continue and how the strains of the cover-up led the relationship between Mr. Young and Mr. Edwards to crumble.

As it became clear that the affair was about to be exposed, and that the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination had slipped from Mr. Edwards’s grasp, the former senator sought to hold on to his slim hopes of a vice-presidential selection by seeking to distance himself from his aide, Mr. Young testified.

Mr. Young said he had become increasingly angry and concerned that he would be left legally liable for a complex scheme that involved taking nearly $1 million from a Texas millionaire, Fred Baron, and Rachel Mellon, a banking heiress. Mr. Baron died in 2008.

Mr. Young said that after he had finally managed to arrange a secret meeting with Mr. Edwards in the summer of 2008, that the two men had nearly come to blows because Mr. Edwards was not willing to admit publicly that he was the father of Ms. Hunter’s child.

The child, Frances Quinn Hunter, is 4, and lives with her mother in Charlotte. Mr. Edwards sees her regularly.

After the angry exchanges in a Washington hotel room that day, Mr. Edwards defused the situation, Mr. Young testified, by saying “that he loved me and that I knew he would never abandon me.”

The last time the two men talked, Mr. Young said Wednesday, was in August 2008, when they met in a car on a rural road not far from Mr. Edwards’s home in Chapel Hill, N.C.

There, Mr. Young said, Mr. Edwards broke a final piece of bad news: a long-promised job at a foundation financed by Ms. Mellon was no longer in the cards.

Mr. Edwards went on to complain that “his life was hell” and that his wife had taken to waking him up at night to scream at him about the affair, Mr. Young testified.

“It was surreal,” he said.

Mr. Young said he finally told Mr. Edwards that if he did not publicly acknowledge the child’s paternity soon he would release details about the affair himself.

Mr. Edwards, he said, had seemed unfazed.

“He looked at me and said, ‘You can’t hurt me, Andrew. You can’t hurt me,’ ” Mr. Young said.

By MIKE BAKER and NEDRA PICKLER

June 4, 2011

Two crucial witnesses are dead. Another is 100 years old. A fourth was recently held in contempt of court.

The daring indictment of two-time presidential candidate John Edwards has pitfalls at every turn for federal prosecutors, adding strain to a Justice Department section still trying to recover after botching its last major political case.

Government attorneys are relying on an untested legal theory to argue that money used to tangentially help a candidate — in this case, by keeping Edwards’ pregnant mistress private during his 2008 presidential run — should have been considered a campaign contribution. Edwards’ attorneys counter with an argument that’s reprehensible but could raise reasonable doubts with a jury: He was only interested in hiding the affair from his cancer-stricken wife, who died in December.

The six-count indictment accuses Edwards of conspiracy, taking illegal campaign contributions and making false statements. On Friday, appearing both defiant and contrite, he insisted he did not break the law.

Some legal experts tend to agree.

At the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which typically criticizes the Justice Department for not pursuing enough cases against public officials, executive director Melanie Sloan questioned why federal officials were spending resources on this one. She said it is unlikely prosecutors can prove that participants of the scheme intended for the money to aid Edwards’ candidacy, and Sloan said it was a stretch to argue that private plane flights provided to mistress Rielle Hunter should somehow be considered campaign contributions.

Former presidential candidate John Edwards is seen with his daughter Cate following a court appearance in Winston-Salem, N.C., Friday, June 3, 2011. A grand jury indicted the two-time presidential candidate on Friday, accusing him of trying to protect his political ambitions by soliciting and secretly spending more than $925,000 to hide his mistress and their baby from the public.

“This is a really broad definition of campaign contribution,” said Sloan, a former federal prosecutor. “It has never been this broadly interpreted.”

Sloan predicted a judge will toss the case before it goes to trial.

The federal investigation focused particularly on money coming from two Edwards supporters — former campaign finance chairman Fred Baron and Rachel “Bunny” Mellon, the widow of banking heir Paul Mellon. Combined, they provided $925,000 used to help hide Hunter, according to the indictment.

Prosecutors contend the money was intended to aid his campaign by preventing public disclosure of the affair, which would have destroyed his candidacy. But prosecutors could have difficulty proving intent, given that Baron died in 2008 shortly after the scandal surfaced and Mellon is now 100 years old.

Andrew Young, a former Edwards aide who initially claimed paternity of Hunter’s baby and helped keep her in hiding, will likely be a key government witness. Edwards’ attorneys have already tried to portray him as being motivated by financial gain.

Hunter sued Young around the time he was releasing a tell-all book, and her attorneys aggressively questioned his credibility. A North Carolina judge said he was troubled by a series of seemingly conflicting statements Young made under oath in the lawsuit involving a purported sex tape depicting Edwards. Superior Court Judge Abraham Penn Jones held Young in contempt and considered sending him to jail before backing away as Young’s lawyers argued that the discrepancies were memory lapses.

Young has said he found the sex tape among trash left behind at a home he was renting for Hunter, and he said he held on to the tape to corroborate his story. And if it weren’t for Young’s book, the plot to conceal Hunter may never have been exposed.

Prosecutors did cite some evidence in their indictment that could be used to argue that participants of the conspiracy knew the money was going to aid Edwards’ candidacy. A note from Mellon in 2007 indicated that she wanted to help pay Edwards’ bills “without government restrictions.”

In another section, prosecutors claim Edwards told a former aide that he was aware of Baron’s payments even though he publicly claimed otherwise.

White-collar attorney Matt Miner said although the four counts of receiving illegal campaign contributions may be novel applications of the law, the false statement and conspiracy charges are more straightforward and could be the most problematic for Edwards.

“If Edwards can be shown to have conspired to receive contributions in a way that he would not otherwise have to report — and then those false reports were filed under his signature — both charges are fairly straightforward conspiracy and false statement charges,” Miner said.

Still, Tara Malloy, associate legal counsel at The Campaign Legal Center in Washington, said she expects the government to rely heavily on Young’s testimony and credibility.

“I don’t see an enormous smoking gun for Edwards’ involvement,” Malloy said.

Edwards initially denied having an affair with Hunter both during his candidacy and after his campaign ended. Baron continued his support of Young and Hunter after the campaign ended as well, adding support to the argument that the money wasn’t necessarily related to his candidacy.

In August 2008, Edwards admitted the affair. But he denied fathering Hunter’s child until the beginning of last year.

The prosecution is being handled jointly by the U.S. attorney’s office in Raleigh and the Justice Department’s public integrity section, which is coming off the bungling of its last high-profile case against a public official. Attorneys from the section are under criminal investigation for their handling of the case against the late Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, whose guilty verdict was vacated after the department admitted it withheld key evidence from the senator’s legal team.

Stevens had been convicted of lying on financial disclosure forms about gifts, which ended his political career in 2008. He was killed last year in a plane crash.

Miner said he expects prosecutors were especially careful building their case against Edwards after the Stevens debacle, though Sloan said it could leave the public integrity section with another embarrassing conclusion.

“I think the prosecution is ludicrous,” she said.

By BOB WOODRUFF , JON MEYERSOHN, JAMES HILL and CHRIS KILMER

June 3, 2011

His life was an American dream that, today, seems be crashing down: ABC News has learned that John Edwards, the millworker’s son who became a U.S. senator and a presidential candidate, will face indictment today on criminal charges following an investigation seeking to connect Edwards to an allegedly illegal scheme to cover up his extra-marital affair.

Edwards admitted the affair, with film producer Rielle Hunter, in an exclusive interview with ABC News in August 2008.

“I made a very serious mistake. A mistake that I am responsible for and no one else,” he said.

Still, Edwards at the time vigorously denied allegations of a cover-up.

“I have never paid a dime of money to any of the people that are involved,” he said. “Nothing has been done at my request. So if the allegation is that somehow I participated in the payment of money, that is a lie. An absolute lie.”

But former Edwards campaign aide Andrew Young says Edwards was involved in a very big way.

Young says Hunter and Edwards first met in a chance encounter at New York City’s Regency Hotel in February 2006.

“She came up to him at the bar and said, ‘In person, you come across as very hot with a lot of energy,’ but on TV, you don’t — you come across as very distant. I’m in TV. I can help you with that.’ That night they were in the same hotel room together and slept together the first night,” Young said.

A few months after the affair allegedly began, the senator helped Hunter land a six-figure deal to produce web videos that aimed to reveal the real John Edwards.

As campaign videographer, Rielle Hunter traveled on the first leg of Edwards’ official presidential campaign, from New Hampshire to Nevada. When the campaign returned to Edwards’ home base in North Carolina on Dec. 30, 2006, Young said Edwards asked him to make sure his wife, Elizabeth Edwards, and his mistress didn’t meet — but the two women came face to face nonetheless.

That night, Young said, Edwards admitted to his wife that he had had an affair. Elizabeth Edwards, who died of cancer four years later, reacted “violently” to the news, he said.

“Anytime that he would almost be asleep, she would get like an inch from his face and start screaming at him,” he said.

Hunter was fired the next day, and Young said he found himself largely shut out of the campaign but assuming a different role in Edwards’ life: his sole confidant.

“He and Rielle told me way more than I wanted to know about anything and everything,” he said.

In May 2007, Young got a frantic call from Hunter. She was pregnant, she told him, and Edwards was the father.

“She says, ‘I need to talk to him right now,’ and started cursing, and she threatened to go public if I didn’t put them together. I said, ‘Well, either somebody’s died, or somebody’s pregnant.’ And she said, ‘Well, nobody’s died,’” Young recalled.

Young said a desperate Edwards started looking for a way out: He convinced Young, who is married with his own children, to claim paternity of Hunter’s child. He tried to shield Hunter’s pregnancy from the media by sending Hunter, Young and Young’s wife into hiding.

In December 2007, the group began traveling by private jets to luxury hotels on a cross-country game of hide and seek. It was all financed by wealthy Edwards campaign operative Fred Baron, and it was all with Edwards’ approval, Young said.

“Maybe he didn’t know where [we were going], but he knew about the money. He knew about the methodology and he knew about the sources,” he said.

Before his death in October 2008, Fred Baron denied that Edwards was in on the scheme. Baron said the trips were entirely his idea.

Hunter and the Youngs eventually settled at a California mansion, rented by Baron for $20,000 a month.

In February 2007, Hunter gives birth. When Young called Edwards to tell them the news, Young said the senator was very short with him.

“It was bone chilling to me,” he said. “He is right in the middle of negotiating with Obama and Hillary [Clinton] for being VP or attorney general — and that took precedence over his child being born.”

In July 2008, Edwards traveled to Los Angeles to raise money for the homeless — but he was also there to visit his newborn child at a Beverly Hills hotel. What he didn’t know was that reporters from The National Enquirer had staked out the hotel.

The Enquirer’s Allan Butterfield confronted Edwards at the hotel.

“We said to him, ‘Are you here to see Rielle Hunter?’” Butterfield said. “He looked like his world had just passed him by, you know, like ‘Oh, I’m done.’”

Young said Edwards called him the next morning.

“He was bawling, he was crying, and he said, “I have, I have been caught. I have been caught,’” Young said.

But three weeks later, in an interview with ABC News, when Edwards admitted the affair, he denied that he was the baby’s father.

At that point, Young had publicly declared that he was the father. When asked if he believed that to be true, Edwards said he didn’t know.

Young said Edwards’ comments made him angry.

“At this point when he was admitting an affair, he could have cleared my name,” he said.

Despite Edwards’ denials, it was soon known that he was the father. The cover-up was over and federal investigators immediately began to follow the money trail, with Andrew Young a witness to the huge transactions.

Andrew Young said he regrets being part of the latest chapter in the rise and fall of John Edwards.

“I am so sorry for my part in this. I am so sorry for what I did to my family.This is going to be on my tombstone,” he said.