Just because Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., has supplanted him as the face of sexual impropriety in politics doesn’t mean that former Sen. John Edwards is out of the news. Edwards was indicted last week for allegedly using campaign funds to conceal an extramarital affair during his 2008 campaign, and now prosecutors have e-mails between the former candidate and his speechwriter at the time that indicate he knew about payments to his mistress even while he was publicly denying it.
This evidence may be key for prosecutors as they try to prove that he failed to report nearly $1 million spent on his mistress to keep their affair under wraps, the Associated Press reports. Prosecutors must prove that Edwards had knowledge of the payments in order to convict him.
In e-mail exchanges with speechwriter Wendy Button, Edwards is said to have told Button that he had been sending money to support his mistress, even though she hadn’t been asking for money.
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