Downfalls

John Edwards Affair Probe

Alleged: Mistress got campaign cash.

How much does it take to ruin a man? Over the last year, John Edwards has suffered a failed presidential bid, a publicized extramarital affair, a wife with terminal cancer, and now, a federal probe into how he spent campaign funds. Edwards' political action committee paid $100,000 his mistress, Rielle Hunter, for producing a video about his candidacy the Associated Press reports. A more suspicious charge, however, is the additional $14,086.50 the PAC paid her company on April 1, 2007 for "furniture" despite the fact that the PAC only had $7,932.95 in cash on hand at the time. It's also come to light that Edwards' national finance chairman, Fred Baron, was paying Hunter to resettle in California, although he says he didn't use campaign funds. Baron died of cancer last October, and Edwards says he knew nothing about those payments. "I am confident that no funds from my campaign were used improperly," Edwards said in the statement. "However, I know that it is the role of government to ensure that this is true."