GREENSBORO, NC – John Edwards would kick his top aide’s family out of their own home for entire days so that he could quality alone time with mistress Rielle Hunter, the wife of his former staffer testified today in the second week of the one-time presidential hopeful’s federal corruption trial.
Young, the long-suffering wife of Edwards aide Andrew Young, openly wept on the stand when she recounted how Hunter had barged into her and her husband’s quiet life in North Carolina in 2007.
“I did everything and anything she needed, it was getting worse and worse by the day. As I said, it was very intimidating from my standpoint,” Young testified.
“The only instruction was to take care of Rielle so they could continue the campaign,” she added. But, Edwards, she said, still used their own Chapel Hill home as a secret love nest.
Edwards is accused of subverting federal campaign statutes in his bid to keep his affair with Rielle, a Manhattan socialite and later mother to his love child, secret.
He faces a $1.5 million fine and five-years each for every count of the six-count indictment.
At one point during her teary testimony, the judge excused the jury so Young, 38, could compose herself.
Hunter would often ask for more than her $5,000 monthly allowance that Edwards’ said was suitable to keep his mistress happy, Young testified.
Young said she and her husband would have to pay thousands of dollars for Hunter to consult with her “spiritual advisor,” based in California.
Hunter, a New Age devotee, even called the guru, Bob McGovern, for emergency spiritual advice at a restaurant when the waiter brought her the wrong dressing for her ruben sandwich, Young recalled.
She also recalled on the stand the first time Hunter stepped foot into her home.
“She walked down the hallway, took a spin in the entryway, and opened her arms and said, “I’m here!”
Young had just returned from medical treatment and had bandages rapped around her head recalled: “I leaned against the couch and thought, ‘there was no hello?’ I had wrappings all over my head.”
She also said she had to keep the kids away from Hunter because she couldn’t explain to her children who she was and why she was living in their home.
But, in perhaps more damning testimony for Edwards, Young said the candidate told her himself that taking the money from the wealth donors was perfectly legal.
“I heard Mr. John Edwards tell me on the phone that he checked with the campaign lawyers and that this was legal,” said Young.
“I cannot tell you how disgusted I was. Why me? This was my husband’s fight. … Now I had to fix it,” she said.
The payments — totalling nearly $1 million — came from a wealthy Texas lawyer, Fred Baron, who served as Edwards’ campaign finance chairman and an elderly heiress, Rachel “Bunny” Mellon.
Edwards, a Democrat, was vying for the 2008 presidential nomination and later kept his affair secret in a bid to become vice president or attorney general.