Whatever Happened To John Edwards? The North Carolina Senator's Fall From Grace Was Quick & Absolute
There are so many names and faces in American politics, and sometimes one will explode into relevance one day, and blow up in scandal the next, careers made and destroyed in relatively short order. And that's a description that fits a certain former senator from North Carolina pretty well — whatever happened to John Edwards?
For those of you who don't keep up with politics that closely, or those of you who've forgotten about the high-profile, tawdry scandal that scuttled Edwards' once-promising political future, here's some background: Edwards, now 62, was the Democratic Party's candidate for vice president back in 2004, running with Massachusetts Senator John Kerry against incumbent president George W. Bush and vice president Dick Cheney.
The Democrats lost that race, obviously, but Edwards was back in 2008, this time running for president in his own right. But it was during that presidential campaign that all of the drama, scandal and controversy would start: Edwards had an extra-marital affair with a woman named Rielle Hunter, eventually fathering a daughter named Quinn with her, while his wife, Elizabeth, was stricken with terminal breast cancer. She ultimately separated Edwards before she died, though not immediately — she stood by him after he admitted the affair, but when he confessed to fathering the child, she started divorce proceedings.
That wasn't the end of Edwards' troubles, however. With his political career already in shambles, and considered a pop-cultural punchline and a cruel pariah for cheating on his gravely ill wife, Edwards then faced down criminal allegations that he misused campaign funds to try to cover up the affair with Hunter. He was indicted by a North Carolina grand jury, and faced six felony charges in 2012, as CNN detailed: conspiracy, four counts of illegal campaign contributions, and giving false statements.
His defense team was successful in the end, however — they successfully argued that Edwards' actions might have been immoral, but not criminal. As the Los Angeles Times detailed at the time, attorney Allison Van Laningham defended Edwards in court as having "committed sins but no crimes," arguing that it was "humiliation he was trying to avoid all along." He was ultimately cleared on one count, received a mistrial on the other five, and was home free when federal prosecutors dropped the case weeks later.
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