Former presidential hopeful John Edwards must pay back $2.3 million that exceeded his matching funds from his 2008 campaign, the Federal Election Commission ruled Thursday.

In a 6-0 vote, the commission approved the findings of its own audit, which showed the excess funds.

The matter is separate from the criminal conspiracy case against the former U.S. senator from North Carolina, in which Edwards is accused of issuing false statements and violating campaign contribution laws.

His trial on those charges is tentatively scheduled to begin in October. He pleaded not guilty to the counts in June.

A grand jury has been investigating whether money given to support Edwards’ mistress, Rielle Hunter, by benefactors of Edwards should have been considered campaign donations, a contention Edwards’ team has disputed.

Courtesy: CNN

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Just weeks before federal prosecutors charged John Edwards in a six-count felony indictment, ABC News has been told, the two-time Democratic presidential candidate requested millions of dollars from Rachel “Bunny” Mellon, the banking heiress whose financial support of Edwards is at the center of the criminal case.

One person with knowledge of the request confirmed the amount was in the millions of dollars but was unwilling to discuss why Edwards was seeking the money.

William Taylor, an attorney for Mellon, declined to address questions from ABC News. A spokesman for Edwards’ legal defense team also refused to comment.

Edwards’ ongoing relationship with the reclusive Mellon, who will turn 101 years old in August, was being closely monitored by federal authorities as the investigation into alleged violations of campaign finance laws was wrapping up.

Their concerns were heightened in late April when Mellon dispatched her private jet to a small North Carolina airport to pick up the former senator and members of his legal team. As ABC station WTVD’s helicopter hovered above the airport to capture video of the boarding passengers, Mellon’s pilot paced around the tarmac before eventually taking off again with no one else aboard.

But a month later, as Edwards’ attorneys were engaged in last-minute negotiations with the Justice Department, ABC News learned, Edwards was visiting Mellon for a private luncheon at her sprawling Virginia estate.

Taylor, who said he was present for that meeting on May 26, described it to ABC News as a “personal and social” visit and told the Associated Press that “[t]here was no discussion of anything related to [Edwards'] situation” at the luncheon.

Rachel Mellon was an early supporter of Edwards’ bid for the 2008 Democratic nomination, pouring more than $4 million into political groups and non-profit organizations connected to the Edwards campaign.

But the government alleges that Mellon also was the principal source of money that enabled Edwards to conceal his affair.

Identified in the criminal indictment against Edwards only as “Person C,” Mellon provided more than $700,000 that the government alleges were unlawful contributions that went to pay the living and medical expenses of Rielle Hunter while Edwards continued his pursuit of the nomination.

Another attorney for Mellon, Alex Forger, has said previously that Mellon was unaware of how her money was being used.

Edwards’ defense team is expected to argue that the money from Mellon was a gift and has blasted the government’s case as “wrong on the facts and wrong on the law.”

ABC News has been unable to determine if Mellon provided the money allegedly requested recently by Edwards. And since the campaign is now long over, even if such a gift were made, it would not be illegal.

At a brief appearance in federal court in Winston-Salem earlier this month, Edwards indicated his intent to plead not guilty to all the charges. A trial date has not yet been set.

One of the conditions of his release from custody was that he have no further direct or indirect contact with Rachel Mellon.

Courtesy ABC

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Even posing for his official federal mug shot, Edwards’ hair is perfect and there’s that cheesy smile that finished second in the 2008 Iowa Democratic caucuses.

The 58-year-old former senator, former vice presidential nominee, former presidential candidate and former philanderer of a wife dying of cancer, is under six federal felony counts, including conspiracy.

They stem from alleged irregularities involving hundreds of thousands of his campaign fund dollars going to secretly support Edwards’ mistress, Rielle Hunter, the mother of the child he fathered back in 2008.

Edwards’ estranged wife Elizabeth died of cancer in December.

Edwards is also a wealthy former trial lawyer. Aren’t they all?  So, he should know well how the upcoming courtroom scenario will unfold.

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The New York Times reports:

John Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina and presidential candidate, was indicted Friday morning by a grand jury in Raleigh on charges that he violated campaign finance law during his 2008 presidential campaign.

Wait, something is missing in the New York Times report:

John Edwards, the former Democrat senator from North Carolina and  two-time Democrat presidential candidate and Democrat vice-presidential candidate, was indicted Friday morning by a grand jury in Raleigh on charges that he violated campaign finance law during his 2008 presidential campaign.

FIXED!!!

Amazing how liberal media such as the New York Times feel the party designation of Democrats involved in a scandal isn’t relevant.

Any way, the grand jury, which has been investigating the case for two years, indicted Mr. Edwards on six counts — four involving illegal payments, one involving conspiracy and one involving false statements.

At issue are financial contributions that prosecutors say Mr. Edwards received in excess of federal limits,  did not  report properly and   then misused for the political purpose of hiding his extramarital affair to save his candidacy. Mr. Edwards has maintained that he used the money to hide the affair, but for private purposes — to conceal it from his wife.

No doubt that word of the Edward’s indictment brought a smile to Democrat Congressman Anthony Weiner who has been embroiled in his own “WeinerGate” scandal.

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You can always count on a liberal to obfuscate, use circumlocution, or just plain lie.  We have Bill Clinton with “it depends on what the definition of “is” is” and John Edwards with,  ”it depends on how one defines “gift”". And now, Democrat Anthony Weiner who say is might be is weiner.

Yes, you read that right, Democrat Congressman Anthony Weiner now claims that the picture may in fact be his “weiner”, however, he claims he didn’t send it.

The Democrat Congressman and rumored candidate for New York mayor told NBC today, “I was the victim of a prank,’’ adding that he can’t say “with certitude’’ whether the photo shows his body.  The truth is finally rearing its ugly head… no pun intended.

This begs more questions than it actually answers.  Why would the married Congressman have pictures of his erect member on his computer and stored on the site, “yFrog”? Why would the Democrat Congressman take a picture of his “manhood” using what is obviously a webcam if he didn’t intend to send it to someone other than his wife?  What were his intentions? Has he ever sent it these pictures to anyone else since he’s been married and if so to whom and why? Can he say with certitude that these pictures have not found their way to the inbox of some underage teen?  And speaking of which, why did he follow a number of young teenage girls on Twitter.

Update:

WOLF BLITZER, CNN: “Have you ever taken a picture like this of yourself?”

REP. ANTHONY WEINER (D-NY): “I can tell you this, that there are — I have photographs. I don’t know what photographs are out there in the world of me. I don’t know what have been manipulated and doctored and we’re going to try to find out what happened. But the most important reason I want to find out what happened is to make sure that it doesn’t happen again. Obviously somebody got access to my account. That’s bad. They sent a picture that makes fun of the name weiner. i get it. Touche.”

The Congressman may have been caught with his pants down.

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I’d like to congratulate my friend, Alan Butterfield, for his hard work and tenacity while gather the facts of the John Edwards’ affair.  His superlative investigative work and reporting were instrumental in the National Enquirer earning the recognition of the Pulitzer Prize Board.

From the time I first met Alan, it was clear to me that the stories he reported were honest, fair, but most of truthful.  When sharing my own storing, he went to great lengths to ensure its accuracy.  It comes as no surprise that his reporting on the John Edwards’ story would earn him and the National Enquirer the respect of the Pulitzer world.  After all, he and his contemporaries aren’t afraid to report stories that others wouldn’t dare touch.

From ABC News:

The National Enquirer is now legit, according to the Pulitzer Prize Board.

The body behind journalism’s most prestigious award conceded Thursday that the self-proclaimed tabloid can compete with mainstream news outlets for its prizes. Because it broke the story about former presidential candidate John Edwards’s mistress and love child, the Enquirer’s staff is eligible for the Pulitzer in two categories: “Investigative Reporting” and “National News Reporting.”

“We’ll see what happens,” National Enquirer executive editor Barry Levine said today. “We want to see now that the Pulitzer people review our submission and we expect, obviously, that there’s going to be tremendous competition in the investigative category and in the national reporting category.”

To detractors who contend the supermarket tabloid isn’t worthy of commendation, Levine said, the proof is in his paper’s reporting.

“The fact that we may package this story along with the types of stories involving celebrities that are not typical of newspapers that the Pulitzer committee may look at on a yearly basis has nothing to do with the reporting,” he said. “That persistence, that old-fashioned, shoe-leather reporting that we exhibited on this story, at the end of the day, is what the Pulitzer committee recognized.”

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Former Democrat vice-president candidate John Edwards' pregnant mistress.

Do you remember John Edwards?  You hardly hear about the former Democrat Senator from North Carolina who was one state away from becoming the next vice-president in 2004 and twice ran for president.  Most media attention is on a former Alaskan governor who dared to give birth to a child with Down Syndrome. There was even talk that he might be selected to be Obama’s attorney general- the chief law enforcement officer of the land.

The media really loved Edwards– he was all over the place.  Liberals and unions embraced him.  Given that, you would think we’d be hearing a lot more about Edwards’ scandal and a lot less of Palin… well, maybe not.  Maybe if Palin had cheated on her cancer-stricken husband, been involved in a cover-up, and had a sex tape involving her lover in the hands of a campaign aid… well, perhaps then the media would leave Palin alone out of respect for her family, right?  Certainly, there is no double-standard in the press.  I mean, if there wa, how would I be able to publish this jaw dropping article about the Edwards’ cover-up from ABC news:

When presidential contender John Edwards decided he had to hide his mistress and her pregnancy from his wife — and from the voters — he concocted an elaborate scheme to keep the scandal a secret, according to the once-loyal aide who helped smuggle the woman through a series of luxurious hideaways. Wealthy benefactors were called on and their sizable contributions funded the lavish life on the lam.

“I know of at least a million dollars. And there was much, much more,” said Andrew Young of the scheme that brought him to testify in front of a grand jury. “We were living in mansions, flying around in jets. … Money was no object.”

The Iowa caucuses were just two weeks away in December 2007, when Young falsely claimed he was the father of his boss’s love child.

“We knew we were going to have to leave town as soon as this hit the Enquirer,” Young recalled of the bombshell that broke in the supermarket tabloid the National Enquirer.

Young and his wife, Cheri, said they had less than 12 hours to make the decision to go on the lam with his boss’s mistress — Rielle Hunter — but ultimately agreed to go into hiding with her. According to Young, Edwards’ campaign finance chairman, Fred Baron, who’s now deceased, made it possible for them to effectively disappear.

“Fred said to me, ‘Andrew, I got more money than I can ever spend. You spend whatever it takes to take care of the situation. And let us focus on making him president, vice president or attorney general,” Young recalled.

Young gives his account of life on the run with the pregnant mistress of a presidential contender in a new tell-all book titled “The Politician,” which will be released Jan. 30.

According to Young, they left in the middle of the night in December 2007 on private jet provided by Baron and flew to the Westin Hotel in Hollywood, Fla., to take cover from the media firestorm.

In a statement to ABC News on the “20/20″ interview, Edwards’ attorneys said that according to media reports “there are many allegations which are simply false” and that Young appeared to be “motivated by financial gain and media attention.”
At that point, the Youngs said they had no idea where they were going or how long they’d be gone, but sent their three kids — Brody, 8, Gracie, 7 and Cooper, 5 — to stay with their grandparents.

“We couldn’t tell our families where we were going,” Young said. “We said …’You’re going to see our names in the newspapers. We love you. Everything is fine. Trust us. But we can’t tell you where we are.’”

Cheri Young said she was shocked and displeased, but said she felt as if the couple was taking a hit for the greater cause.

“Ultimately, we felt like … his chance to be president of the United States laid in our hands because he could continue if we said yes. And we did,” she said.

Young told ABC News that Edwards knew where they were going and how it was being financed.

“He might not have known the exact figures, he might not have known where exactly we were living. But he knew about the money, he knew about the methodology and he knew about the sources,” Young claims. “He would — arrange things, but then … he would say, ‘You know, I can’t know about this in case, you know, I’m going to be sworn in for attorney general.’”

Baron had claims before he died that it was his idea, not Edwards’, to get Hunter out of town.

“Fred, on his own and without discussing it with anyone else, provided financial help to Andrew Young and Rielle Hunter when they were being besieged by the media to try to help them protect their and their families’ privacy,” Abbe Lowell, a friend of the family, said in a statement to ABC News on behalf of Fred Baron. “It would be awful if anyone who was a willing beneficiary of Fred’s generosity and friendship was now so ungrateful that he or she tried to mischaracterize what happened, blame Fred for their decisions, and especially try to put words in Fred’s mouth now that he has passed on and cannot speak for himself.”

Overnight, the middle class Young family said they were suddenly living like kings — with Edwards’ benefactors footing the bill.

When they first arrived in Florida in late December 2007, Young claims he received a FedEx package of “an envelope full of cash, hundred-dollar bills, was wrapped in Fred Baron’s stationery. And it said, ‘Old Chinese saying, use cash, they can’t trace it,’” Young told ABC News.

And on Christmas Eve, when the Youngs wanted to spend the holiday with their kids, a private jet picked them up and whisked them all to Baron’s $14 million vacation home in Aspen, Colo.

“Fred’s house has this indoor swimming pool with a Jacuzzi and the constellations up in the ceiling. To the kids, it was a big adventure. They were getting private ski lessons, sledding in the front yard, riding in jets,” said Young.

Baron even paid for their kids’ Christmas presents, according to Young.

Cheri Young said the “private masseuses” and “a chef that had been featured in Food and Wine magazine” were a world away from what they were used to.

Days later, Baron moved the Youngs and Hunter to the Loews Coronado Resort in San Diego, where they celebrated New Year’s Eve.
Two weeks and nearly $23,000 in hotel bills later, Baron rented a sprawling ranch house in Montecito, Calif. — close to Oprah Winfrey’s estate — for $20,000 a month, where Hunter and the Youngs waited for the baby to be born.

But Young said despite the free-flowing funds, keeping Hunter under wraps wasn’t easy. At the Diplomat Hotel in Hollywood, Fla., he said she demanded to see their rooms before they checked in to make sure they had “the right energy.”

“We were up on the top penthouse suite … and then that had the right energy,” he recalled.

Young said it almost seemed like Hunter was itching to be discovered. And according to Young, she had grown accustomed to a life of extravagance.

In early October 2007, after Hunter’s two-week stint living in the Young’s North Carolina home, Young said she was moved into a home nearby paid for with money that Mellon had provided.

There, he said, she was allowed to spend freely to furnish the four-bedroom rental home, using a new credit card in the alias “Jaya James.” Young said she was also given a $28,000 BMW.

Young said these fresh expenses were paid for by Rachel “Bunny” Mellon, a reclusive 99-year-old heiress and Edwards fan, who gave more than $700,000 which ended up in accounts controlled by Young with no strings attached. Young told ABC News that Mellon did not know her funds were going to support Hunter until after the fact.

“She [Mellon] would send them in boxes of chocolate with a note like … ‘This is to save the nation,’ or ‘This is … to save the world’ or whatever,” Young said. “The checks would range from $10,000 up to $200,000.”

Mellon declined to comment.

During this time, Young was also pitted against Edwards’ increasingly demanding mistress and suspicious wife. In a voice mail to Young on Dec. 14, 2007 at 8:19, the day after Young said he agreed to claim paternity of Hunter’s child, Edwards warned his aide that Elizabeth may be listening in on their next call: “I am going to leave this message just in case you get a call from me where I ask you what’s going on. The reason we are calling is because Elizabeth is standing there. So, just be aware of that. If I am calling saying what happened, how did this happen, or what’s going on, then that’s because Elizabeth is standing there with me.”

In hiding, Young said they all watched as Edwards finished a distant second in Iowa, third in New Hampshire and South Carolina, and suspended his campaign in January 2008. But since Edwards was angling for a position in a Hilary Clinton or Barack Obama administration, the cover-up continued, Young said.

After Hunter gave birth to daughter Frances Quinn Feb. 27, 2008, life on the lam became life in limbo — according to Young — waiting for Edwards to put an end to all the lies.

It wasn’t until last week, with Young’s book about to be published, that Edwards abandoned his long denial, revealing in a statement that he was the father of Hunter’s almost 2-year-old daughter.

But Young’s relationship with Edwards had rapidly deteriorated to the point that Edwards wouldn’t return the aide’s phone calls.

Young said his role in the scandal made it impossible to get another job. He claims that Edwards led him to believe that Baron and Mellon were setting up a foundation of which Young would be the executive director.

“[He] promised me … that our family would never want for anything. That they were going to take care of us for life …. hat John Edwards had never had such a good friend. That he loved us,” Young said.

But as fast as they went into hiding, everything came crashing down even faster. On July 21, 2008, Edwards attended an event in Los Angeles and, without the knowledge of the Youngs, went to the Beverly Hilton to visit Hunter and her baby. The National Enquirer had been tipped off by a source, staked out the hotel, and caught Edwards in a public bathroom during the visit.

In May 2009, a federal grand jury in Raleigh, N.C. began investigating whether any crimes were committed in an effort to conceal Edwards’ affair with Hunter.

Young testified about his role in the cover-up, as well as the senator’s.

“Everything that I did was at the direction of John Edwards, everything,” Young said. “So I don’t understand how the senator could even begin to deny that he was involved in every aspect of this.”

Edwards issued a statement in May 2009 saying he was “confident that no funds from my campaign were used improperly.”

Young said he provided phone records, hotel bills, videos and voice mails, documenting the time he spent hiding Edwards’ mistress with virtually unlimited funds to the grand jury and was given “limited immunity.”

Young told Woodruff any benefit he got from the cover-up is balanced by the reality that he has been unemployable for 2½ years. Young said he had to write “The Politician” to survive financially. Their sole source of financial support is his wife’s work as a nurse.

But in his book, Young writes that about midway through their several months on the lam in five-star hideaways, they set aside thousands of dollars of Mellon’s money for “future use.”

Asked by Woodruff if the money was still set aside, Young said it had all been spent.

“The money went into the house and we were supposed to sell the house and go somewhere else,” Young said. “We couldn’t come back to Chapel Hill.”

The Young’s 5,300 square foot home — just three miles from the Edwards’ mansion and valued by the tax assessor at $893,000 — was built, in part, with a $325,000 gift from Baron, who wired the money directly to the builder, according to Young. The Youngs claim they were encouraged by Baron to build the house with no expense spared, and then sell it and move to another city.

“We’ve completely lost our reputation. We have a house that we can’t finish that’s threatening to bankrupt us,” he said. “We were seduced by the power and the lights and the money … we were. And there’s no excuse for that. There’s no excuse for a lot of our behavior.”

“It’s not something we’re proud of. It’s not something, we’re humiliated, we’re embarrassed … we know we made the wrong decision,” Cheri Young said.

August 2008, shortly after Edwards admitted to ABC News that he’d cheated on his wife in an exclusive interview with Woodruff, was the last time Young saw Edwards. But the decisions Young made still haunt him.

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

Slideshow

The seriousness of this can not be overlooked.  This scandal could have placed the entire country at risk should this man have become vice-president.  Imagine how foreign governments or foreign entities could have used this information to blackmail the country.  Equally as disturbing would have been Edwards’ position as the highest law enforcement officer in the country had he been made attorney general.  Luckily, Edwards’ behavior is trivial when compared to Palin’s decision to give birth to her son Trig and to embrace values that are important to her.

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From Gawker.com

Sources have told us that, in the throes of their affair, John Edwards and Rielle Hunter made a sex tape that contains “several sex acts.” And that his aide, Andrew Young found it on an unmarked DVD.

The tape, say both our sources, is explicit and reveals that Edwards “is physically very striking, in a certain area. Everyone who sees it says ‘whoa’. She’s behind the camera at first.”

When rumors of the affair first broke Young was so loyal to Edwards that he pretended that he was the father of Hunter’s daughter Frances Quinn, now 2. But part of Young’s disillusionment with the 2004 vice presidential candidate and 2008 candidate came one day as he went through a stack of DVDs at Rielle Hunter’s house.

It was this betrayal that prompted Young to write his tell-all book, The Politician, out February 2. Background: The New York Daily News reported last June that Young mentioned the existence of the tape in his book proposal. It’s expected that he’ll reveal further details in that story, and in the 20/20 interview to promote it, to air on Friday. “It [the tape] was kind of the last straw for people who had sacrificed savings and jobs to lie for John,” said one of our sources. “You should expect to see plenty more stories about him coming out of the woodwork when more people realize how… complicated… his motivations were.”

Up until he discovered the DVD, says one of our sources, Young’s devotion was typical of the “cultish” fervor Edwards brought out in his staffers. This is why, says our source, who is close to Hunter, major media organizations could not stand up the affair story despite well-intentioned efforts. “They [staffers] would do anything to stop it coming out — they lied, they bullied, they called reporters’ editors and bad-mouthed them, they exchanged access.”

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Not since Clay Aiken’s coming out of the closet has North Carolinians been  so shocked!!!  John Edwards has admitted that the baby is his… Gasp.

Also, Elizabeth and John Edwards have separated.  North Carolina law requires that a married couple be separated for one year before they can divorce.

Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards has finally come forward to admit that he fathered a child with a videographer he hired before his second White House bid. “It was wrong for me to ever deny she was my daughter,” he said Thursday.

Edwards confirmed this in a statement released to The Associated Press, after initially denying that he’d fathered a child during an affair with campaign aide Rielle Hunter.

“I am Quinn’s father,” the former senator declared in his statement, as the second birthday of Frances Quinn Hunter approaches. Continued…

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Bill Clinton and alleged girlfriend Gina Gershon

1.  It appears that John Edwards wasn’t the only one having an affair during the 2008 campaign, in the book ‘Game Change’, it alleges that Mrs Clinton set up a ‘war room within a war room’ to deal with questions about  Bill Clinton’s mystery woman.  ‘The stories about one woman were more concrete, and after some discreet fact-finding, the group concluded that they were true: that BIll was indeed having an affair – and not a frivolous one-night stand but a sustained romantic relationship,’ says the book.   Bill Clinton cheating– shocking!  But who can blame the guy when he’s married to a closet lesbian.

2. Roll call is reporting that health care negotiators are facing “a serious problem” in resolving their differences and are not likely to have a final bill until February, according to key House Democrats involved in ongoing talks.

3.  New polls suggests independent voters are turning away from Obama as he nears the anniversary of his January 20 inauguration — though in a sign of hope for his administration, he remains more popular than his policies. In a new Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday, US voters were split 45-45 on whether Obama’s first year was a success or failure.

4.  President Obama may soon be known as the warmonger president.  His administration is asking for an additional $33 billion for the war in Afghanistan and Iraq along with a whopping record breaking $708 billion for defense spending.  Obama will tell Congress that his military objectives are to win the two wars while preventing new ones.  Obama ran last year promising to withdraw troops from Iraq and using the saving to fund health-care.   Apparently that was campaign rhetoric.  No word on whether voters will protest the murders he’s committing in Iraq and Afghanistan for these useless wars or whether they will demand that the money he’s wasting be spent helping our own people without health-care.

5.  The White House has abandoned its controversial method of counting jobs under President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus, making it impossible to track the number of jobs saved or created with the $787 billion in recovery money.

Despite mounting a vigorous defense of its earlier count of more than 640,000 jobs credited to the stimulus, even after numerous errors were identified, the Obama administration now is making it easier to give the stimulus credit for hiring. It’s no longer about counting a job as saved or created; now it’s a matter of counting jobs funded by the stimulus.

That means that any stimulus money used to cover payroll will be included in the jobs credited to the program, including pay raises for existing employees and pay for people who never were in jeopardy of losing their positions.  Don’t you just love how the Democrat party and this president, especially, change the rules constantly.

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