On Friday, former presidential contender John Edwards was indicted on six felony charges, including the charge that he solicited and accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign donations, in violation of campaign finance law, to keep his mistress and their baby hidden from the public while he pursued the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. (Cue The Daily Show: “John Edwards spent an awful lot of money hiding a baby. Hasn’t he ever heard of a duffle bag?”)
Edwards pleaded not guilty, and to reporters outside the Winston-Salem courthouse on Friday he said, lawyer-like: “I will regret for the rest of my life the pain and the harm that I’ve caused to others. But I did not break the law. And I never, ever thought that I was breaking the law.” (The Justice Department must prove that Edwards knowingly and willfully violated campaign finance law.)
On the off chance that your time quota this week for Consumption of News About Contemptible Men in Politics has been exhausted elsewhere, I offer this roundup of recent Edwards news.
“Cad,” concluded both Reuters and the Washington Post’s editorial board (the latter while arguing that the government’s was a “questionable legal case”). “Creep,” said a Star-Ledger editorial headlined, in print, “A Lout Driven by Lust” (the online headline was, “It could’ve been worse: Edwards could’ve been elected”). “Lout” it was, too, for Bloomberg’s Margaret Carlson. “John Edwards continues to embarrass state,” proclaimed the Winston-Salem (NC) Journal in an editorial lamenting that “now, unfortunately, [Edwards] and his carefully coiffed hair will be in our faces for years to come.”
For an in-a-nutshell lede, there’s this from Reason’s hit & run blog:
It is not a crime to have an affair while your wife is dying of cancer, father a child with your mistress, and persistently deny both the affair and the child until forced to come clean when the guy who pretended to be the father finally admits the ruse. It is not even a crime to have such an affair while you are running for president. What is a crime, say federal prosecutors, is using your rich friends’ money to conceal the affair by paying for your mistress’s medical treatment, travel, and housing.
But, is it? A crime? Can the Justice Department prove that Edwards knowingly and willfully violated our “murky” (this word and its variants come up often in the coverage) campaign finance law?
ProPublica walks readers through the murk with a handy “John Edwards Cheat Sheet,” exploring “What Are the Facts and Do They Make Him a Criminal?” Over at Slate, election law expert Richard L. Hasen has an informative column discussing “why the case against John Edwards may be hard to prove.” Writes Hasen:
Let’s begin with an unassailable fact: John Edwards behaved very badly…What’s less clear, however, is whether Edwards should go to jail for his behavior. Specifically, does it amount to a violation of federal campaign-finance laws?…
Politico reports that the prosecution has been looking around for former FEC commissioners to testify about how to interpret the campaign-finance law, and at least one of these commissioners has turned the government down, viewing the case as too murky.
If the law is so murky that the government needs an expert to testify as to what it actually means, there’s a decent argument that it would be unconstitutional to use that law as the basis for a criminal prosecution. It is just too vague…
The court of public opinion has long since issued its verdict on Edwards. In the court of law, however, it could be hard to prove the case against him.
I don't need the Washington Post and Reuters to tell me what to think of John Edwards. Not forgotten, by me, in this kind of over-the-top public demonization and moral high-horsism was the public humiliation and dragging through the slime that these execrable insiders visited on Elizabeth Edwards as she was dying of cancer. You want to talk about cads and creeps -- those words exactly characterize the detestable John Heilemann and Mark Halperin.
But where is the equivalent public condemnation of John Ensign? Where is Ensign's indictment? The Majority Leader of the House, John Boehner, and sitting Senator Tom Coburn acted to cover up Ensign's affair and criminal behavior from 2007 through 2008, and the man sat in the Senate for more than two years after the affair became public, along with the apparently illegal structuring of Ensign's parents' "gift" to the Hamptons as hush money. Add to that the strong-arm tactics against his constituents and supporters to save his political career.
Ensign gets the kid-glove treatment from these same beltway insiders, or silence. He's a Republican. The hypocrisy and conservative bias in the Beltway is starkly evident here.
#1 Posted by James, CJR on Thu 9 Jun 2011 at 06:53 AM
James whined: But where is the equivalent public condemnation of John Ensign?
padikiller responds: Here are a few of the differences between Ensign and Edwards, James:
1. Ensign isn't a two-time Presidential candidate.
2. Ensign didn't drag his dying wife out on the campaign trail while he was simultaneously having an affair.
3. Ensign didn't have an illegitimate child with his mistress.
4. Ensign didn't pin the affair on his best friend and then lie to the American people about it.
5. Ensign came clean and resigned when he came under investigation.
6. Ensign didn't pay off his mistress with campaign funds.
Given that Ensign gave up his Senate career and is now under investigation by DOJ, one cannot credibly claim that he has been given "kid glove" treatment.
You're a hypocrite, James. You decry "public demonization and moral high-horsism" when a Democrat finds himself with his keister in a sling, yet you clamor for "oppo research" to skewer Republicans over these same issues to "fight fire with fire"..
This kind of juvenile hypocrisy is precisely what has alienated the Dems from the American people.
#2 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Thu 9 Jun 2011 at 07:37 AM
Let's see, there's this:
Why Sen. Ensign should be worried about possible indictment - Sunday, April 4, 2010 | 2 a.m. - Las Vegas Sun
By Jon Ralston
Sunday, April 4, 2010 | 2 a.m.
(quote)
In the federal penal code, it is known as “structuring.”
And it is a word Sen. John Ensign should remember because it is very likely to be on any indictment with his name on it.
That’s what I am told by a reliable source familiar with the deliberations occurring inside the Justice Department as federal authorities in Washington try to do with Ensign what they could not do with former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens: Get their man. Or, because they had Stevens and then lost him because of misconduct, Justice wants to make sure if it goes to the next step with Ensign, the charges stick.
Structuring is a broad term that refers to the crime of creating financial transactions to evade reporting requirements — for example, a $96,000 payment to your mistress laundered through a trust controlled by your parents and calling it a “gift” instead of what it obviously was: a severance payment that had to be reported.
That the feds are looking at structuring as a possible crime will not surprise many old hands who have watched the sordid Ensign saga play out, morphing from a fairly grotesque he-slept-with-his-best-friend’s-wife-who-was-also-his-wife’s-best-friend story to a fantastically creepy tale of a senator trying to keep the cuckolded husband quiet by any means necessary, including, perhaps, structuring transactions with businesses in exchange for campaign contributions.
(unquote)
#3 Posted by James, CJR on Thu 9 Jun 2011 at 09:05 AM
He was a SITTING SENATOR for two full years after he admitted to the affair.
Back in Washington, Ensign received warmly
By Lisa Mascaro
Tuesday, June 23, 2009 | 2 a.m.
WASHINGTON — A week after admitting an affair with a campaign aide, Republican Sen. John Ensign returned to the capital Monday, receiving handshakes from colleagues but unable to salvage a bill he had co-authored to help the tourism industry.
It was Ensign’s first public appearance since last Tuesday, when he disclosed the eight-month affair. Since then Ensign, one of Nevada’s most-liked elected officials, has resigned his No. 4 GOP Senate leadership post and watched his popularity plummet.
On Monday Ensign, wearing a dark suit and bold red tie, arrived on the Senate floor smiling and seemingly upbeat. He accepted a few half-hugs and shook hands with Democratic Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Chuck Schumer of New York, among others.
Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who shares a house with Ensign and others, stood by Ensign’s side.
(unquote)
#4 Posted by James, CJR on Thu 9 Jun 2011 at 09:07 AM
Cognitive dissonance, illustrated...
The story is about media coverage of Democrat involved in a scandal, so the solution is to hijack the thread and gripe about a Republican embroiled in a scandal? All to change the subject?
Let's stick with the subject of the story, OK?
#5 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Thu 9 Jun 2011 at 11:30 AM