could keep campaigning for president and keep making the argument he should be elected in part because he was a family man. that money was spent for the benefit of the john edwards for president campaign, not just for john it edwards the man. and $900,000 being spent on that is way over the limit. for how much you can legally donate to a campaign. remember when we thought there were limits on how much money you could give to a campaign? the john edwards trial is unprecedented, nobody has been indicted on charges like this before, let alone in the wild, wild west world of campaign finance no rules that the supreme court has created with citizens united and all the other campaign finance laws they have killed in the last few years. just for some perspective, sheldon allison, the casino billionaire and his family, they have spent more than 16 times as much money as implicated in the john edwards scandal on newt gingrich in the 2012 republican presidential primary. at least there eticly th
it is not about whether john edwards was a bad candidate. for all the salacious detail here, ultimately this whole sex scandal now boils down to whether he took campaign donations that were too big. joining me now is hampson dellinger. he s been covering the edwards trial by blog and places like the atlantic online. mr. dellinger, thank you for time, nice to have you here. you re welcome. great to be with you. i know you have been covering this very, very closely. did i get the basics there about the scandal and the case? i won t be surprised if i messed something up? i m not surprised you didn t. you got it spot on. and this really is a one-of-a-kind case that will likely be the only case of its kind because of the law west world we live in post citizens united, post speech now. we ve got corporations and individuals giving tens of millions of dollars as you pointed out in direct aid of
has put together, that s another fascinating part of this, he s such an accomplished attorney in his own right, a trial lawer in his own right, yet he had to build the legal team around himself. do you think he s done a good job putting together a defense team and honestly do you think they ll win. he s built a team and torn it apart-time and time again going through attorneys like bezzles elizabeth they taylor went through husbands. it has been troubling to see how many fine attorneys have been part of this defense team and then left it. the outcome, we can t know, we do know that this is a jury that s going to be working class. i was in court the other day when the pool came in, you saw more baseball caps than neckties, more t-shirts than oxford button-downs. it s the type of jury that john edwards appealed to as a candidate, that he talked about in his two americas speech. it s that i think he think he has a chance with but boy he s
democratic side of a cautionary tale about how we vet presidential nominees in this country. but the reason i m making a federal case about this is because a federal case has been made of this. specifically about the money part of it, which we haven t even got to yet. see during the 08 campaign with the national inyearer reporting john edwards had an affair and he denying it, the reported mistress hanging around giantly pregnant was a politically inqueent thing for this presidential campaign. two of his wealthy supporters sent $900,000 trying to hide the woman with whom john edwards had the affair, flying her around the country on private jets, putting her up in nice hotel rooms and paying for medical care while she was pregnant. here s where the federal case of it comes in. according to the government, that $900,000 spent on john ed wards mist tress, that was a campaign contribution. it was money spent to protect john edwards public image so he
that was the cover story that was supposed to survive, even after john edwards admitted the affair himself. yes to cheating, yes to the affair but no to father of a child with his mistress. that lie survived until the staffer fronting the lie wrote a book. he taped an interview with abc news that he was not the baby s father, john edwards was. a week before the interview was scheduled to air john edwards admitted he had the affair but yes the baby was his. he made that public admission in january 2010 when the baby was nearly two years old. frankly, it was one year to the day after he himself would have been inaugurated president at the 2008 campaign turned out a little differently. it is kind of the most salacious political scandal of our time, but because it is in the past and john edwards is never going to run for anything ever again, it would mom make sense to keep covering this now, except as the