not campaign contributions, so that s the setup for you, of course that s probably going to play out for the next few months, if not more than a year on the national stage. alisyn: but john, it seems as though the defense may have a point, because it s john edwards friends who gave him the money who say these were personal loans, these weren t campaign contributions. reporter: yeah, and he knew both of these people, long before news of the affair became public. so were these contributions or were these payments simply to a friend who was in a difficult position, or were these payments made to try to propel him to the presidency. to try to ensure that the campaign didn t falter. prosecutors will try to make that linkage, that these payments were inextricably linked to the edwards campaign and his fortunes for president, and of course, gregg craig and edwards defense team is going to try to separate those two things that they note had nothing to do with the campaign, only had to do w
the charges. the u.s. attorney for the eastern district of north carolina, however, disagrees. this morning, handing out a 6-count indictment against the former senator, presidential candidate. one count of conspiracy to violate campaign laws and make false statements to the federal election commission, four counts of accepting illegal campaign contributions. now, what this case all revolves around is $950,000 that was given to john edwards by two of his close friends, bully mellon and fred barren, those two have said that the money was a gift to john edwards to deal with a sticky personal situation and not a campaign contribution. if it is proven that those were in fact campaign contributions then the attorney for the eastern district here in north carolina may have a case. here s what he said in the indictment, and this goes to the crux of the case, alisyn, he said, quote, the purpose of the conspiracy was to protect and advance edwards campaign for president of the united states by
and using hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions to conceal edwards extramarital affair. the justice department contends that edwards was mounting a campaign that said family comes first, and if it was found that he had had an extramarital affair, not to mention a child with rielle hunter, that that would undermine the idea of him being a family man and would therefore destroy his presidential campaign, so the u.s. attorney has tried to link those things, the money that was given, payments given by buddy mellon and fred barren so this idea that they were trying to not help john edwards out of a sticky situation but protect his campaign for president, and if prosecutors can make that case in court they just may have something against john edwards. as gregg craig, his attorney said, no one in the history of presidential campaigns has ever been charged with the sort of violations that john edwards is charged with, they say they can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that those p
mike emanuel is at the white house of the. reporter: we expect him to talk about the jobs numbers. several from the white house said this monthly jobs report is a bump in the road. they brief this is, you shouldn t get too wound up about one month s particular jobs numbers. we think the general trajectory of the economy is heading in the right direction but make no mistake about it but they recognize it is disappointing. to make a dent in unemployment numbers you have to create north of 200,000 jobs. so 50,000 or so jobs is not going to get it done. we expect the president to talk about that and to give his vision about where we go from here. white house aides will point out to you we think we hit a couple temporary headwinds in the economy in terms of the crisis in japan. also the high gasoline prices and they do believe they are doing the right things. but we ll hear the president make his case in a short time. alisyn: mike, sounds like more than a temporary headwind when
this is overnight videotape from the u.s. navy, a u.s. coalition launching two nights of punishing air attacks targeting mommar gadhafi s forces, b52 bombers, jet fighters, more than 120 tom hawk cruise missiles, scattering progovernment forces on the ground in libya, the long time leader vowing a long war ahead. good morning, everybody. we ve got it all covered for you. what a way to start a weefnlgt i m bill hemmer, welcome to america s newsroom . good morning to you martha. martha: good morning, bill. i am martha maccallum. an international air assault, all but crippling libya s air defenses, that according to the u.s. military. listen to this: there has been no new air activity by the regime and we have de tented no radar emissions from the defense sites targeted and there has been a significant decrease in the use of all libyan air surveillance radar which is most of those appear to be limited now only to the areas around tripoli and surt. we are not ruling out strike