GREENSBORO, N.C. - John Edwards drove erratically in a borrowed sport utility vehicle down rural North Carolina roads as his once-trusted aide tried to keep up. The former presidential contender pulled into a secluded road and beckoned for the aide, Andrew Young, to get in.
Young, testifying Wednesday at his longtime boss’s corruption trial, said he noticed Edwards seemed nervous. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead despite the blowing air conditioner.
Edwards confessed that life inside the nearby gated estate he shared with a cancer-stricken wife angered by his affair had become “a living hell.’’ Young said Edwards then shocked him by denying any knowledge of $725,000 in secret checks from an elderly heiress used to buy his mistress’s silence.
“I didn’t know about these, did you?’’ Edwards asked, according to Young. Worried he was being taped, Young said no.
The August 2008 exchange, also recounted in Young’s tell-all book, reads as if pulled from a political thriller. It was Young’s third straight day of testimony as the government sought to prove Edwards masterminded a scheme to use nearly $1 million from wealthy campaign donors to conceal his affair with Rielle Hunter from voters.
Young had falsely claimed paternity of Edwards’s daughter with Hunter as the politician dismissed the stories as “tabloid trash.’’
During the 2008 meeting in his car, Young told Edwards he had kept evidence of the coverup, including voice mails, e-mails, and an intimate tape made by the woman. He said he threatened to go public if Edwards didn’t come clean about the baby.
“You can’t hurt me, Andrew,’’ Edwards told Young as they parted, Young said.
The one-term US senator from North Carolina has pleaded not guilty to six counts related to campaign finance violations. He faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted on all counts.
Edwards denies knowing about the secret money, much of which flowed into accounts controlled by Young and Young’s wife, Cheri. Edwards’s lawyers claim the Youngs siphoned off the bulk of the money to pay for their $1.5 million house near Chapel Hill.
Young testified that when Edwards asked him in 2007 to claim paternity, the candidate pledged to set the record straight after the baby was born. Yet months passed, and Young said he and his wife had grown tired of sharing a house with the increasingly demanding Hunter. Young demanded a face-to-face meeting with the senator, who was then in talks with Barack Obama’s campaign about becoming the Democratic vice presidential nominee. Edwards asked Young to keep the secret longer at a June 18, 2008, meeting in a hotel room near Washington, Young testified. The men shouted and nearly came to blows.
“He said he loved me and that he knew that I knew he would never abandon me,’’ Young said.
Prosecutors allege Edwards directed Young to start giving money to Hunter in 2007 after she threatened to go to the media and expose the affair. Edwards suggested asking elderly heiress Rachel “Bunny’’ Mellon, who had already given generously to the campaign, Young testified.
Prosecutors showed the jury checks from Mellon written to her interior designer, who would then endorse them and send them to Young and his wife. Starting in June 2007, Mellon would provide checks totaling $725,000. Telling Mellon the money was for a “non-campaign’’ expense, Young said, she offered to provide $1.2 million. Donors are limited to a maximum of $2,300 per election cycle.