OLD ‘FLAME’: Big-bucks backer “Bunny” Mellon had a crush on John Edwards, but he was told to stay away if it meant bringing wife Elizabeth. (Getty Images)
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Rielle Hunter wasn’t John Edwards’ only love bunny.
Elderly heiress and big-time financial backer Rachel “Bunny” Mellon had a huge crush on him, the dowager’s close friend testified yesterday in the disgraced pol’s criminal trial.
The now 101-year-old millionaire was “euphoric” whenever Edwards arrived at her farmhouse to flirt and hustle her for cash, said Bryan Huffman, an interior designer who became one of her closest confidants.
“She liked how he looked, what he espoused and what good he could do for the country,” Huffman told the Greensboro, NC, federal jury, echoing other witnesses who said Mellon had been in love with Edwards since meeting him in 2004, when she was still a spry 94.
Mellon’s hugely generous campaign donations — funneled through Huffman and top campaign aide Andrew Young — were allegedly used to hide Hunter from the public.
Federal prosecutors say that was a violation of campaign-finance laws for which the onetime presidential contender faces up to 30 years in prison.
Huffman, speaking in a genteel drawl and dressed in a flamboyant checked blazer with matching tie, was the caricature of a Southern dandy as he detailed Mellon’s infatuation with Edwards.
“There goes the next president of the United States,” Huffman, 48, recounted her saying after a December 2005 meeting with Edwards at her 4,000-acre estate.
She had also reached out to him after the controversy over his $400 haircut in 2007, and offered to pick up the tab for such expenses.
“The campaign gave [Mellon] a wonderful focus and something to hold on to,” Huffman said. Every phone call from Edwards “always made her extremely happy.”
Mellon’s daughter, Eliza, had been in a car accident and was a quadriplegic, Huffman said.
There was one thing she didn’t like about Edwards — his wife, Elizabeth.
Edwards offered to visit the Gillette heiress while Eliza was dying, but said he’d bring his wife. Bunny told him not to bother coming.
“Unless Mrs. Edwards could come then Mr. Edwards couldn’t come,” Huffman recalled.
Bunny was “frustrated” because she had sent scallops down from Nantucket for the lunch, Huffman said. “It was just so upsetting for her.”
Mellon — who saw a Bobby Kennedy figure in Edwards — thought her contributions were for off-the-books campaign expenses, not for a mistress.
“She was having fun with this,” Huffman said, describing how they’d cut checks totalling some $750,000 with memos like “for furniture” in a bid to fool her personal attorney.
As recently as last year, Mellon said she was still devoted to Edwards. “He would have been a great president,” she told Newsweek in July.