What's the Crime Again?

What's the Crime Again?

I'm not a John Edwards fan, to put it mildly. But I confess I can't quite understand what crime he committed under the federal election laws. Sleazy, yes, to knock up his girlfriend while using his ostensible devotion to his dying wife to buff up his presidential image, then paying the girlfriend off to keep her quiet. I'd like to think it permanently disqualified him from success in politics. But the criminal charges arise out of money contributed by friends/donors directly to his mistress, without passing through his campaign fund. The theory is that these were disguised campaign contributions, because he wouldn't have cared about hushing up his mistress if he hadn't been running for president. Obviously that would have been part of his motive, but I should think he'd have been plenty motivated just on general grounds. Mrs. Edwards showed real restraint in letting him live, for instance.

I suppose it's fair to say that rich donors wouldn't have been expected to get involved if his campaign hadn't been at stake; he'd have been left to his own devices. So this could be called an undisclosed campaign donation in the form of "payments of personal expenses of a candidate unless they would have been made irrespective of his candidacy." Still, it seems a little too tortured to be a fit subject of criminal prosecution. I felt the same way about Martha Stewart and Scooter Libby: more about high-value targets and careers than about justice.