Edwards’ Chief Fundraiser Raises New Questions

The Edwards affair scandel has opened a new line of questioning, that is what his chief fundraiser, Fred Baron has been dabbling in illegal activities by covering up the affair using campaign money. These new allegations contradict Baron’s claim that the money he gave Rielle Hunter and Andrew Young the man who claims he is the father of Hunter’s baby. If Baron did use campaign money to finance Hunter and Young’s relocation to California then he should be brought up on charges, however more of an investigation needs to be done to determine how much Edwards knew and if he authorized said payments.

In addition to this there are ties between Baron and Hunter and Young lawyers dealing with rackettering charges. Something stinks here.

New questions emerged Friday about John Edwards’ longtime chief fundraiser and secret efforts that protected the pregnant woman with whom the former presidential candidate has admitted an extramarital affair in 2006.

Fred Baron, Edwards’ national finance chairman and a wealthy Dallas-based trial attorney, has acknowledged that he quietly began sending money to Rielle Hunter, Edwards’ mistress, to resettle in California, along with the family of Andrew Young. Young is the campaign aide who has said he is the father of Hunter’s daughter, born after her affair with Edwards.

But Baron is far more intertwined in the matter than previously known, with long-standing personal connections to the lawyers who represented Hunter and Young, according to a review of legal findings by the Associated Press. Hunter’s lawyer, Robert J. Gordon of New York, was sued unsuccessfully with Baron and Baron’s law firm in 2001 in U.S. District Court in New York in a racketeering complaint. Young’s lawyer, Pamela J. Marple of Washington, was among three lawyers who defended Baron and his firm. The case was dismissed in December 2005.

Baron didn’t return a phone call or respond to an e-mail from the AP on Friday.

The relationships among Baron, Marple and Gordon were first reported in Friday’s editions of the New York Times. The newspaper said Baron acknowledged he might have played a role in hiring Marple and Gordon in the Edwards scandal, after initially saying he did not know how the lawyers were chosen.

Meanwhile, an earlier payment of $14,000 to Edwards’ mistress from the candidate’s political action committee was exchanged for 100 hours of unused videotape she shot producing short Web movies for which she already had been paid $100,000, an Edwards associate told the AP. Neither Edwards’ advisors nor this associate would discuss the purpose of the payment on the record.

That payment from Edwards’ OneAmerica political action committee, which came after Hunter stopped working for it, came in April 2007, months before Baron quietly began sending money himself to Hunter. Baron has described his payments to Hunter as a private transaction.

Edwards acknowledged last week that he had an affair with Hunter in 2006. The former Democratic presidential contender and senator from North Carolina has denied any knowledge of payments from Baron to Hunter.

Baron’s payments could present legal problems, said Washington attorney Cleta Mitchell, who specializes in campaign finance law and who represents Republican candidates and conservative groups. She said all payments to anyone involved in Edwards’ presidential campaigns — including Hunter and Young — should have been fully disclosed under U.S. campaign finance laws.

“That would undermine the purpose of the payments, which was to avoid public disclosure of the affair,” Mitchell said. “The idea that Edwards’ finance chairman can independently hand over substantial sums of money to two campaign workers at a time when Edwards is a candidate and to argue that that is not related to his campaign is a bit preposterous.”

The earlier, $14,000 payment to Hunter is significant because its source was Edwards’ OneAmerica political action committee, whose expenditures are governed by U.S. election laws.

Willfully converting political action committee money to personal use would be a federal criminal violation.

An associate of Edwards, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the $14,000 was paid to Hunter only after she relinquished about 100 hours of cutting-room floor videotape excerpts that were not part of four short Web videos she had produced for Midline Groove Ltd., a company Hunter started with a business partner in 2006.

When Hunter provided the last of more than 100 hours of footage, the firm was paid as contracted for, said the Edwards associate.

Legal experts said it was important for Edwards to demonstrate that the PAC wasn’t paying Hunter merely to keep her quiet about the affair.

“One thing that’s possible is that she was still owed money from what she’d done before for the political action committee, but obviously there are less charitable explanations,” said Richard Hasen, a professor specializing in campaign finance law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

Edwards, who made millions as a personal injury lawyer, has relied heavily on fellow lawyers to finance his political career.

And no single law firm has been more generous than Baron’s. Through Edwards’ election to the Senate from North Carolina and his 2004 presidential bid, the Dallas firm had donated $419,650 to help Edwards win elections, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

Baron, a former president of the main national trade association for trial lawyers and a longtime Democratic donor and fundraiser, also was Edwards’ finance chairman in his 2004 and 2008 campaigns for the presidential nomination.

Baron is also a huge democratic financeer in Texas, donating millions of his own money to start the Texas Democratic Trust . Now considering his recent limelight he needs to be investigated by Congress. But no our Congress would be much more concerned with investigating steroid use in MLB…

 WASHINGTON —  The Dallas lawyer who helped John Edwards’ former mistress move across the country has donated $3.5 million since 2005 to help fuel a Democratic resurgence in Texas, a newspaper reported Saturday.

Fred Baron has been by far the largest donor to a group called the Texas Democratic Trust, and Republicans are now taking aim at candidates who take money connected to him.

Baron, who is Edwards’ longtime chief fundraiser, has helped Democrats rebound from near-obscurity in the Texas House to within striking distance of winning a majority of seats this fall. Baron started the Texas Democratic Trust and gave it $1.9 million in 2005 and 2006, providing more than 80 percent of its funding, according to the Austin American-Statesman.

“Without Fred Baron, none of this would have happened,” Democratic consultant Jason Stanford told the newspaper. “He paid for it. He paid for the work that was absolutely necessary.”

Baron was thrust into the national spotlight after acknowledging that he quietly began sending money to Rielle Hunter, Edwards’ mistress, to resettle in California. Baron has said he did not tell Edwards that he helped Hunter, nor how much money he gave her.

The Edwards saga has given Republicans new ammunition to attack Baron and those who have benefited from his donations. This week, Republicans criticized Democrat Diana Maldonado, who is running for a state House seat, because she received $25,000 from a group that Baron gave $25,000 to in April.

“Making that connection is absolutely in-bounds, and we would be remiss if we didn’t,” said Hans Klingler, a spokesman for the Texas Republican Party.

Slightly more than half of the money raised by the state party’s political action committee in 2005 and 2006 came from the Democratic Trust. Baron’s recent donations are unmatched in Texas by anyone in his party.

As Baron’s money poured in, Democratic gains accelerated. At the start of 2006, Democrats held 63 of the 150 seats in the Texas House. They now hold 71, within five seats of a House majority.

Democrats took control of Dallas County government two years ago and have picked up two congressional seats. But the party hasn’t won a statewide race in 14 years.

 

The Truth Shall Set You Free

John Edwards recent revelation that he had an affair with ex-campaign employee Rielle Hunter is not in itself important and definitely a private matter. However since he was questioned about it numerous times and lied about it, makes that portion of it a public matter.

What is of concern here is that fact that he had this affair during his lead up to announcing his Presidential candidacy, ended the affair and told his wife of the affair and admits that he had the affair because of his sudden rise in politics, citing his vice presidential run, then has the audacity to announce running for President. This is akin to an alcoholic going to an AA meeting and then turning around and going to the bar afterwards for a nightcap. He contradicts himself in this aspect.

Then he has lied to the public for the past year when questioned about this affair, as recently as two weeks ago. The liberals would like that aspect to be forgotten, but isn’t that just what Bill Clinton did, lied lied lied then told the truth expecting the public to turn a blind eye, which the liberals did and to this day are saying he was impeached for getting a blow job. No you dumb asses, he was impeached for lying under oath. The only difference between Clinton and Edwards, is that Edwards was not under oath, but the core remains he lied to the public and his constituents throughout this situation.

Lastly, in terms of if he is the father, I find it interesting that he does not remember if a child was present at this last meeting with Hunter. Based on his answer I would venture to say yes a child was present, the question is now why would Edwards lie about that? He claims the meeting was because Hunter was having problems and needed to talk, well why would she bring a child to such a meeting. It sounds more like a parental visit to me and he got caught. But that is just my take on it.

Should the child turn out to be Edwards, it proves the lies just continue…

John Edwards admitted to ABC News in an interview with Bob Woodruff Friday that he repeatedly lied about an extramarital affair with a 42-year old campaign employee, but strenuously denied being involved in paying the woman hush money or fathering her newborn child. The former Democratic U.S. senator from North Carolina said he would be willing to take a paternity test and divulge the results publicly.

“Two years ago I made a very serious mistake, a mistake that I am responsible for and no one else. In 2006, I told Elizabeth about the mistake, asked her for her forgiveness, asked God for his forgiveness. And we have kept this within our family since that time.”

Edwards, 55, said he told his entire family about the affair after it ended in 2006, and that his wife Elizabeth, who has incurable breast cancer, was “furious” but that their marriage would survive. The couple have three children, Cate, 25, Emma, 9, and Jack, 7. When he confessed his affair to his wife, “she was mad,” Edwards said.

“She was angry,” he said. “I think ‘furious’ would be a good way to describe it. She didn’t understand. We both went through a process of trying to figure out how it happened, why it happened.” Late Friday evening, Elizabeth Edwards posted a message on her blog, saying that she and her children will stand by Edwards.

“Our family has been through a lot. Some caused by nature, some caused by human weakness, and some – most recently – caused by the desire for sensationalism and profit without any regard for the human consequences,” she wrote on http://elizabethedwards.dailykos.com/. “None of these has been easy.  But we have stood with one another through them all.  Although John believes he should stand alone and take the consequences of his action now, when the door closes behind him, he has his family waiting for him.”  

She too, denied in the blog post that Hunter’s child was fathered by her husband.

Edwards told ABC News that he met secretly with former lover Rielle Hunter as recently as last month in a California hotel room at her request because “she was having some trouble, she just wanted to talk.”

“I wanted her not to tell the public what had happened,” he said at another point. “Very simple. That’s the reason I went.”

Edwards contacted ABC News and requested that he be interviewed about the allegations. He agreed before the interview to place no limitations on the questions he would be asked, but limited the amount of time he would be questioned. He declined to clarify exactly when the relationship began or ended but said it was over before he announced his campaign for the presidency on Dec. 28, 2006.

“I think my family is entitled to every detail,” Edwards said. “They’ve been told every detail…I think beyond the basics…I think that’s where it stops in terms of the public because I think everything else is within my family and those privacy boundaries out to be respected.”

A series of dramatic allegations revolving around the affair have been reported by the supermarket tabloid National Enquirer. The most serious of those allegations is that Hunter has been receiving hush money through the Edwards campaign in order to keep her quiet.

In the interview, Edwards denied knowing anything about any support being provided to Hunter or to Andrew Young, the former Edwards campaign aide who has said that he, not Edwards, is the child’s father.

If any such support was being provided, Edwards insisted, “I had nothing to do with any money being paid, and no knowledge of any money being paid, and if something was paid, it wasn’t being paid on my behalf.”

Edwards’ 2008 national finance chairman Fred Baron said late Friday that he had provided “assistance” to Hunter and others without Edwards’ knowledge.

In a statement emailed to ABC News, Baron said that he “decided independently to help two friends and former colleagues rebuild their lives when harassment by supermarket tabloids made it impossible for them to move forward on their own.”   “I did this of my own volition without the instruction or suggestion of anyone, and made a conscious decision not to tell anyone, including John Edwards, that assistance was provided.  The assistance was offered and accepted without condition.  This is now and shall always remain a private matter between these individuals and me.”

Edwards said he knows he could not be the father based on the timing of the baby’s birth on February 27, 2008.

A grainy photo that appears to show Edwards holding a child was published recently in the National Enquirer, which claimed that the baby was Rielle Hunter’s child Frances Quinn. Edwards said he couldn’t make “sense” of the photo.

“I don’t know if that picture is me,” Edwards said. “It could well be. It looks like me. I don’t know who that baby is. I have no idea what that picture is.”

Pressed to clarify whether the child in the picture was Hunter’s child, Edwards suggested that the tabloid may have digitally altered the picture, but also noted the frequency with which politicians hold babies. “Do you know how many pictures have been taken of me holding children in the last three years? I mean it happens all the time.”

Edwards was asked again about the meeting.

“Are you saying you don’t remember holding that child of Miss Hunter?”

“I’m saying you asked me about that photograph. I don’t know anything about that photograph, I don’t know who that baby is. I don’t know if the picture has been altered, manufactured, if it’s a picture of me taken some other time, holding another baby…I have no idea. I was not at this meeting holding a child for my photograph to be taken I can tell you that.”

Edwards finally told Woodruff that he did not remember a baby being present at the meeting last month in California.

Edwards blamed the affair on the adulation surrounding his remarkable rise into presidential politics.

“I went from being a senator, a young senator to being considered for vice president, running for president, being a vice presidential candidate and becoming a national public figure. All of which fed a self-focus, an egotism, a narcissism that leads you to believe that you can do whatever you want. You’re invincible. And there will be no consequences.”

According to friends of Hunter, Edwards met her at a New York city bar in 2006. His political action committee later paid her $114,000 to produce campaign website documentaries despite her lack of experience. Edwards said the affair began during the campaign after she was hired. Hunter traveled with Edwards around the country and to Africa.

When the National Enquirer first reported the alleged Edwards-Hunter affair last October 11, Edwards, his campaign staff and Hunter vociferously denounced the report.

“The story is false, it’s completely untrue, it’s ridiculous,” Edwards told reporters then.

He repeated his denials just two weeks ago.

Edwards today admitted the National Enquirer was correct when it reported he had visited Hunter at the Beverly Hills Hilton last month.

Edwards made a point of telling Woodruff that his wife’s cancer was in remission when he began the affair with Hunter. Elizabeth Edwards has since been diagnosed with an incurable form of the disease.

Edwards was asked whether he loved Hunter.

“I’m in love with one woman,” he responded. “I’ve been in love with one woman for 31 years. She is the finest human being I have ever known.”

The former senator was asked why his wife was not by his side as he made the admissions about his affair to ABC News.

“I have seen these public figures who bring their wives along when they say they’ve done something wrong; confessing some wrong and the wife – they bring their wives to stand beside them I guess, to show support…Elizabeth didn’t do anything wrong. I…didn’t ask for her to be here. I asked for her not to be here. Uh, this is my responsibility; my alone. I have to be the man and take responsibility.”

Earlier in the interview, Edwards described his experiences in personal, visceral terms.

“I am imperfect,” he said. “And anybody, anybody watching this broadcast or who hears about this who wants to beat me up for this, they should have at it. The truth is – you can’t possibly beat me up more than I have already beaten myself up.”

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