GREENSBORO, NC — John Edwards was a really, really bad husband, but he’s no criminal, his defense team said in closing arguments yesterday.
While acknowledging that Edward’s tawdry affair with a campaign groupie — while his wife, Elizabeth, was dying of cancer — was “shameful,” lead attorney Abbe Lowell tried to convince jurors that the government’s star witness, Andrew Young, was all to blame.
He said Andrew and his wife, Cheri, profited from the $1 million scheme to cover up the affair with contributions from wealthy backers Bunny Mellon and Fred Baron, and were inconsistent in their testimony about what Edwards knew.
“Even those two, who could shame Bonnie and Clyde, couldn’t get their story straight,” Lowell said.
Lowell pegged Young as the mastermind, asking the jury to follow the money. He argued that if the money was used to keep Edwards’ mouthy mistress, Rielle Hunter, silent, then why did she only make off with $38,000?
He said Edwards never received a penny, while Andrew and Cheri Young funneled close to a $1 million into the construction of their Chapel Hill dream house with the cover-up cash.
There was “$35,000 for porcelain crown veneers for Mr. Young, I suppose for his TV appearances,” Lowell said mocking the ex-aide, whose book and movie deal the lawyer claimed would benefit greatly from a guilty verdict.
Earlier, prosecutor Bobby Higdon threw Edwards’ stump speech about “the two Americas” — the rich and the poor — back in his face, by reminding the jury that campaign-finance laws protect the poor by limiting the power the wealthy have on election results.
“Campaign-finance laws are designed to bring the two Americas together at election time,” Higdon said. “John Edwards forgot his own rhetoric.”
Edwards knew campaign-finance law, Higdon said, and suffered the consequences of disclosing unseemly finances when his $400 haircut was exposed — raising questions over the pretty pol’s judgment.
Higdon argued the same would have happened if Edwards had to disclose the funds spent to keep his pregnant mistress quiet and out of the public eye.
The prosecution team dismissed the notion that Fred Baron flew Hunter and Young around the country in his private jet to hide from the press in luxury hotels as a kind gesture to two close friends.
“This wasn’t a guy quietly helping a friend. It was a full rescue operation for a teetering campaign,” Higdon said.
On the other hand, some in the jury nodded in agreement to the defense’s argument about what is considered a contribution. according to the FEC rule book.
“If traveling and lodging of staff is not considered a campaign contribution, how could supporting a mistress be one?” Lowell asked.
Lowell said Edwards’ motivation for lying was to hide the truth not from the law but from his wife.