Reply #37: No.The point is, we really don't know what it was for and don't seem to be able to wait for a trial

[No Elephants]

before we throw "guilty" around. What is Democratic about that? As I said, I have no stomach for what Edwards did personally, but that is a totally separate issue. He is not on trial for adultery. As to election fraud, I am willing to wait for a trial on legal issues before I hurl stones at a Democrat, despite his personal conduct.


Mellon's intent is all that really matters. (The other donor, too, but I don't know anything about him.)

Mellon's lack of connection to Hunter is irrelevant. Obviously, she had a strong connection to Edwards.As I understand it, the defense is that Mellon made a personal gift to Edwards. The name on the check doesn't change that.

What if Edwards saif to her, I am so stressed. I have this woman and this baby, but I cannot acknowledge either one because Elizabeth is dying and I am running for President. It's making me ill. I don't know how much longer I can bear up. I can't use my money because Elizabeth would know. Heaven knows, I've been wrong, but I don't want to hurt her like that or hasten her death. Can you possibly help me?

If I were as loaded as Mellon and my friend came to me with that story and asked me to give his girlfriend--and the mother of his infant child--a home and furnishings (perhaps antiques), or whatever, I would do it and it would be in my mind a personal gift to my friend. Whether or not my gift allowed him to continue a political campaign would not be foremost, if relevant at all. I would be concerned for him, for his dying wife, for children watching their mother die and for my friend's infant child who had no other source of support.

As far as noting "antiques" on the check, do you know the money was NOT spent on antiques? More to the point, as to "straightforward," do you know beyond reasonable doubt that that Edwards instructed Mellon to make that notation on the check? That it was not her own idea of being discreet?

Or, even further removed, a mistake on the part of whomever did her checkwriting? (No very rich person I know personally does his or her own. All have bookkeepers, accountants or personal assistants do it--and the rich folks I know they're all healthy and relatively young, all having inherited their wealth. At most, they sign the check.)

Another point is, there does seem to be something going on with Edwards that is different from other alleged criminals.

Yes, Democrats did complain about Kerry and Heinz. (Did DU pile on Kerry, too? I was not here then.)

Yes, the DNC filed a complaint against McCain, also for using his wife's plane and other resources.

Are either of them being prosecuted? Were they even investigated vigorously?

In any event, there seems to be a zeal here that makes me wonder, especially from an administration that did not prosecute Buscho and could not even bring itself to write a damned LETTER to Yoo or Bybee's bar association.