SKADDEN TAKES LEAD AS EDWARDS PLEADS NOT GUILTY TO CAMPAIGN FINANCE CHARGES
By abraun on June 03rd, 2011
Update, 6/three/2011, 6:00 p.m. EDT – John Edwards pleaded not guilty to conspiracy and campaign finance violations Friday afternoon, and publicly denied any wrongdoing, according to CNN.
Former North Carolina senator and presidential candidate John Edwards was indicted Friday by a federal grand jury in North Carolina on felony charges that he violated campaign finance laws during his 2008 run for the White House. Edwards faces six counts of conspiracy, illegal campaign contributions, and making false statements.
The 1-time vice presidential nominee and prominent plaintiffs lawyer was charged after plea negotiations between his defense team and federal prosecutors failed to create an agreement, according to The Washington Post. (Click here for a copy of the 19-page indictment, courtesy of The WaPo.)
The Justice Department announced that Edwards, 58, was indicted in the Middle District of North Carolina in Winston-Salem as a result of “a scheme to violate federal campaign finance laws.” Edwards is scheduled to appear in court this afternoon before U.S. magistrate judge Patrick Auld.
“[Edwards] is alleged to have accepted far more than $900,000 in an effort to conceal from the public facts that he believed would harm his [presidential] candidacy,” said a statement by assistant U.S. attorney general Lanny Breuer. “As this indictment shows, we will not permit candidates for high office to abuse their unique capacity to access the coffers of their political supporters to circumvent our election laws. Our campaign finance program is designed to preserve the integrity of democratic elections–for the presidency and all other elected offices–and we will vigorously pursue abuses of the kind alleged nowadays.”
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher Flom partner Gregory Craig, who joined the firm last year after stepping down as White Residence counsel, has taken the lead representing Edwards, along with media savvy partner Cliff Sloan and associate David Foster, all of whom are based in Washington, D.C.
Craig, who was traveling to North Carolina to attend a court hearing for his client, said in a statement Friday that Edwards will tell the court “he is innocent of all charges and will plead not guilty.” Craig has acknowledged that his client “has done wrong in his life,” but he reiterated Friday that Edwards “did not break the law and [we] will mount a vigorous defense.”
As we noted back in March, Edwards turned to Craig earlier this year as a federal criminal probe into his campaign finances and any connection to the fallout from his extramarital affair with Rielle Hunter intensified. Craig has joined a nearby team from North Carolina already representing Edwards that consists of Wade Smith of Raleigh’s Tharrington Smith–a firm where Edwards as soon as worked–and James “Jim” Cooney III of Womble Carlyle Sandridge Rice in Charlotte.
Cooney successfully defended former Duke lacrosse player Reade Seligmann in a controversial rape case, while Smith advised an additional ex-player on that team, Collin Finnerty. Both had been eventually exonerated and the lead prosecutor in the case, Michael Nifong, was later disbarred.
Womble Carlyle and Cooney have been representing Edwards in a dispute over the custody of a sex tape the their client allegedly made with Hunter, according to our previous reports. Cooney told us last year that he came to represent Edwards since he utilised to square off against the former plaintiffs’ lawyer when Edwards was still practicing law.
Payments allegedly made by the Edwards 2008 presidential campaign to Hunter, who detailed her relationship with Edwards in GQ magazine last year, are at the heart of the government’s case against him. The sex scandal 1st came to light three years ago when famed Texas trial lawyer Fred Baron–Edwards’s national campaign finance chairman–admitted he paid ex-Edwards aide Andrew Young and Hunter for relocation expenses to move her and a then unborn child from North Carolina to California. (Click here for a list of key figures in the Edwards case, courtesy of The Charlotte Observer.)
The government’s indictment does not name Hunter. It states that from “February 2006 via at least in or about August 2008, Edwards had an extramarital affair with Individual B, which resulted in a pregnancy and the birth of a child.”
Baron, a
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