Young testifies that Mellon was told the money was for personal expenses

From the Daily Mail’s account Andrew Young’s testimony in the John Edwards trial:

Prosecutors showed the jury checks from [Bunny] Mellon written to her interior designer, who would then endorse them and send them to Andrew and his wife, Cheri.

Starting in June 2007, Mellon would eventually provide checks totaling $750,000.

Without telling Mellon what the money would be used for beyond that it was a ‘non-campaign’ expense, Young said she offered to provide $1.2 million over time to help pay for the candidate’s personal needs.

I’m not following the case in detail, and maybe Young, a principal Edwards accuser, has his own motives for falsely denying that Bunny Mellon was told that the money was for campaign expenses. But if Young is telling the truth, then Mellon was not told the money was for campaign expenses but believed it was for personal expenses. In which case it would appear to me that Edwards was not violating federal campaign financing laws. There is no federal law against taking money from a friend to conceal the existence of one’s mistress and child. Why, then, is this trial even occurring, other than to give some federal prosecutor the chance to put a notch in his belt?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 25, 2012 04:51 PM | Send