Lawyers that protected Edwards

NY Times:

As tabloid reports of a sex scandal threatened former Senator John Edwards’s presidential campaign last December on the eve of the Iowa caucuses, two lawyers surfaced with written statements that appeared to exonerate the candidate.

One of them, Robert J. Gordon of New York, said that his client, Rielle Hunter, a pregnant 43-year-old filmmaker, was not carrying Mr. Edwards’s child. Shortly thereafter, the other lawyer, Pamela J. Marple of Washington, sent word that her client, Andrew Young, an Edwards campaign aide, was the baby’s father.

Seemingly issued independently of Mr. Edwards, the statements appeared to deflate the anonymously sourced reports of an Edwards tryst. But what went unnoticed was that the two lawyers shared an important connection to Mr. Edwards that suggests they were part of an orchestrated effort to protect him, one that is continuing even after he admitted last week that he had an affair with Ms. Hunter but denied that he fathered her child.

The lawyers are linked through Fred Baron, a wealthy Dallas lawyer and former finance chairman for the Edwards campaign who was a key player in the campaign’s response to the scandal. Mr. Gordon has worked with Mr. Baron on class-action personal injury cases, and Ms. Marple helped defend a lawsuit brought against both men and their law firms by an asbestos manufacturer.

After initially saying that he did not know how the lawyers were chosen to represent Ms. Hunter and Mr. Young, Mr. Baron acknowledged that he might have played a role.

The revelations of ties among the lawyers emerged through public records and interviews with people close to Mr. Edwards and Ms. Hunter, which suggested that their affair went on longer than Mr. Edwards admitted and that the effort to conceal it by Mr. Edwards’s inner circle was much more extensive than has been reported.

The review found that Mr. Edwards’s political action committee went to unusual lengths to make a final $14,000 payment to Ms. Hunter’s film company months after its contract with the committee had ended. The payment was issued while the committee was short on cash and could pay its bills only after receiving thousands of dollars from Mr. Edwards’s presidential campaign and donations from four people, including Mr. Baron’s wife.

Furthermore, a woman who helped Ms. Hunter create a Web site on New Age spirituality in 2006 says she regularly corresponded with her about a married North Carolina man named John whom Ms. Hunter was dating in March of that year, if not earlier. Mr. Edwards has said his affair with Ms. Hunter did not begin until after she had started doing video work for his political action committee months later.

The woman, Pigeon O’Brien, who says she worked with Ms. Hunter to build her “Being Is Free” Web site and a related foundation, said that Ms. Hunter recounted how she had met “John” at the Regency Hotel in New York in early 2006 and that they had started dating soon after.

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... on April 1, 2007, the committee made another payment to Midline for $14,086, which coincided with the receipt of $14,035 by the committee from Mr. Edwards’s presidential campaign to cover the cost of office furniture, according to Federal Election Commission reports. The infusion of cash from the presidential campaign was necessary to make the payment to Midline, because the committee began April with only $7,932 in the bank, the reports show. The only other money the committee took in during that quarter was donations totaling $18,000 from Mr. Baron’s wife and three other people.

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There is more on some grudging admissions from Fred Baron for his part in the cover up. I recall thinking at the time of Edwards limited hangout with his ABC interview that Baron's story in the Dallas Morning News seemed to be coordinated with Edwards limited admissions.

What is striking to me, is that with all of this high powered lawyer help, Edwards still came out with a terrible story. It was one that late night talk shows have had fun with as has Maureen Dowd. As one put it, his statement about not starting the affair until his wife was in remission sounds like he was celebrating that fact with an affair. It was a statement that made Edwards sound even more callous than National Enquirer already had.

Then there is the mumbo jumbo on the paternity test. He will take one and she won't?

Edwards and Barron have still not removed the taint of what looks like an ongoing cover up from this matter. There attempts to leave some lawyer like wiggle room seem to be fueling further inquiry and the main stream media is now on the hunt. I suspect this will go on until there is some resolution on a paternity test.

There is more on the payments to Hunter here.