John Edwards is being prosecuted for illegally using campaign funds to support and hide his mistress and illegitimate child - except no campaign funds were used, but the prosecution has created a unique new interpretation of campaign funds that neatly ensnares Edwards in a felony.
Government attorneys are relying on an untested legal theory to argue that money used to tangentially help a candidate – in this case, by keeping Edwards' pregnant mistress private during his 2008 presidential run – should have been considered a campaign contribution.
Huffington Post
In the Citizens United decision the Supreme Court ruled that corporations and unions - as "persons" could spend unlimited and unregulated sums in support of a candidate on 1st amendment grounds. But not if the Edwards prosecution prevails with its new theory, in which case those expenditures would certainly qualify as tangentially helping a candidate at the very least, and thus are campaign contributions. This would not be the first time a Supreme Court decision was invalidated on different grounds than those originally used to decide it.
Prediction: we will soon be seeing strong support of Edwards in the conservative media.
9:33 PM PT: Some of the comments have made it evident that I wasn't clear about why an Edwards conviction could affect the Citizens United case.
The reason is solely because of the prosecution theory that third party gifts or expenditures that are used in a way that even tangentially benefit a campaign must be counted as direct campaign contributions and be subject to the limits that go with that.
The independent electioneering expenditures (broadcast ads) that were the subject of the Citizens United case have almost nothing in common with the gifts directed to Edward's mistress and child - except that they tangentially provide a benefit to a campaign. Every other detail is different, but all those other details are not the point - by crafting an expansive new theory to determine what is considered a campaign contribution wide enough to ensnare Edwards in a felony, the theory was made so expansive that it also ensnares independent electioneering ads.
That doesn't invalidate the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United - a lower court has no power to do that. But in the unlikely situation that Edwards is convicted and the conviction is upheld on the grounds of the novel new prosecution theory, the electioneering expenditures that are now permitted under Citizens United could be prohibited for new reasons not addressed by the Supreme Court ruling.