This morning's (Raleigh) News & Observer reports that there's currently a federal criminal investigation underway into whether John Edwards used money from his 2008 campaign to fund his affair with Rellie Hunter.
Finding out whether this is true is going to be rather difficult, because Hunter wasn't paid directly by the Edwards campaign.
Records show that Hunter was paid by a political action committee aligned with Edwards. She received $114,000 to film Edwards as he hopscotched the nation to rally crowds in the fight against poverty. She followed him to Uganda, where he met with starving children orphaned by attacks by rebel forces. Her "webisodes" live still on the Internet.
That PAC was the Center for Promise and Opportunity, a nonprofit that funded much of Edwards' early ground game in New Hampshire and Iowa. It also paid for trips Edwards took across the nation and abroad to speak out against poverty. Hunter was by his side for those, filming.
The revelation of the affair back in 2008 was devastating enough--especially to a lot of us here in North Carolina. I attended a rally Edwards held at Carolina in 1998 during his successful bid to unseat Lauch Faircloth, and was certain this guy would be president someday. It's a shame that such a promising political career effectively ended in such a fashion.
However, if Edwards used campaign money to pay Hunter or the guy who says he's the father of Hunter's baby daughter, then this North Carolinian hopes the tree gets thrown at him. Using campaign money for any private use is beyond unacceptable. Period.