John Edwards: Did he break the law?

“John Edwards is guilty,” said The Denver Post in an editorial. Guilty of cheating on his wife while she was dying of cancer, guilty of fathering a child out of wedlock, and guilty of lying about it when he got caught. By all accounts, his sleazy behavior ended his career in politics, but now the question is: By acting like such a creep, did he break any laws? Last week, federal prosecutors charged Edwards with violating campaign-finance laws by spending $925,000 donated by two wealthy supporters to hide mistress Rielle Hunter and their baby during his presidential run. If Edwards is convicted, he will lose his law license and spend time in jail. Edwards “is a cad, to put it mildly,” said The Washington Post, but it’s troubling that the Justice Department “chose to devote its scarce resources to pursuing this questionable case.” His political career is over, his reputation is ruined. What’s the point of prosecuting him on a very loose interpretation of campaign-finance law?

Shed no tears for John Edwards, said Mona Charen in NationalReview.com. In his brief, meteoric political career, he posed as a champion of the Little Guy. Liberals swooned. In reality, Edwards was a “fortune-hunting, slick, and unscrupulous trial lawyer,” who specialized in falsely convincing juries that it was obstetricians’ fault that babies were born with cerebral palsy. Now the man “who made millions from sweet-talking juries” will have to work his magic on one more jury, said The Washington Times. Good luck, Johnny Boy—you’ll need it.

Actually, he’s got a good chance of beating this rap, said Richard Hasen in Slate.com. Campaign-finance law specifically says it’s legal to pay a candidate’s personal expenses if these payments “would have been made irrespective of the candidacy.” Edwards contends he used the money to keep Hunter and the baby out of sight in order to save his marriage; the government says he did it to run for office. The distinction there is so murky and vague that it will be hard to prove him guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Nonetheless, Edwards’s lawyers are hoping to get the charges dismissed before the case goes to trial, said Bradford Plumer in TheNewRepublic.com. They know that if the fate of this universally loathed phony is put in a jury’s hands, “Edwards really might be screwed.”

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