John Edwards marched toward the White House in 2006 seeking an arsenal of millions collected a little at a time.
He also gathered more ammunition, about $11 million, collected in larger chunks by nonprofit groups conceived and operated to further his aspirations. He also courted a girlfriend.
Federal investigators are trying to connect those dots, sifting through Edwards' financial records to probe whether he used any donations solicited for his campaign to keep quiet his affair with Rielle Hunter.
Edwards, a Democrat and former U.S. senator, on Thursday acknowledged the investigation to The News & Observer.
"I am confident that no funds from my campaign were used improperly," Edwards said in a statement. "However, I know that it is the role of government to ensure that this is true. We have made available to the United States both the people and the information necessary to help them get the issue resolved efficiently and in a timely matter. We appreciate the diligence and professionalism of those involved and look forward to a conclusion."
Edwards declined to discuss the matter.
A review of Edwards' campaign money will turn up a cluster of nonprofits, some not subject to the same rules of transparency as official campaign organizations. Records of one that does disclose donors, the Alliance for a New America, show that Edwards' 2008 campaign got a huge boost from a single source: $3.48 million from a holding company for Rachel "Bunny" Lambert Mellon, a 98-year-old matriarch of the late industrialist Andrew Mellon's family.
The riches that bankrolled Edwards' bid for president will be tough to sort, campaign finance experts say.
"This may be a bit like looking for a needle in a haystack," said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of Open Secrets, a campaign watchdog group. "John Edwards is a leader in misleading the public."
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.
The investigation is being conducted by the office of U.S. Attorney George Holding, and a federal grand jury could consider evidence. Holding, a Republican based in Raleigh, declined to comment on Edwards. Holding has helped prosecute several prominent Democrats.
His office is also investigating a real estate development and car deals involving former Gov. Mike Easley.
'Views resonated with her'
Bunny Mellon took a shine to Edwards in 2004, his first reach for the presidency, said Alexander Forger, attorney for her trust.
But as Edwards prepared for a second run for president in 2005 and 2006, Mellon and her trustees started opening their checkbooks.
Bunny Mellon's fortune is immense. The year before Paul Mellon died in 1999, Forbes magazine estimated his wealth at $1.4 billion. Bunny came to their marriage with money of her own as heiress to the Warner-Lambert fortune, a company now a part of Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company.
The Mellons long orbited a powerful inner circle. The couple entertained British royalty, including Queen Elizabeth, at their farm in Virginia's fox-hunting country. Bunny Mellon helped design the White House's rose garden at the behest of her dear friend Jacquelyn Kennedy Onassis.
Mostly, the Mellons' lives centered around two worlds: the arts and horses. Over the last century, the Mellons have given tens of millions of dollars to the arts, helping create the National Gallery of Art in Washington. They spent millions more on thoroughbred horses, winning racing crowns here and abroad.
Bankrolling a political candidate's campaign appears to be a new kind of investment for Bunny Mellon. According to political contribution records, she has not aligned herself with any major presidential candidate since her friendship with the Ken nedys.
Signs touting Edwards for President lined the edges of her property in Upperville, Va. Edwards visited with her there, too.
"His political views resonated with her," said Jane Maclennan, an attorney for Oak Spring Farms, the holding company for Mellon. "His views would have brought the changes she wanted to the White House."
In particular, Maclennan said, Mellon appreciated Edwards' fight to end poverty. Both she and her husband were committed to fair pay of their laborers, manual and corporate, Maclennan said.
She may have seen a glimmer of another charismatic public servant she favored decades before, Maclennan said. With his looks and a youthful energy, Edwards likely reminded Mellon of John F. Kennedy.
Mellon could not be reached for comment.
At 98, Mellon is active and lucid, friends and family members say.
"She's got it all upstairs," said her grandson, Stacy Lloyd. "She's in amazing shape for her age."
The roles of 2 nonprofits
Campaign finance laws prohibit candidates from spending campaign money to pay for personal expenses they would have incurred had they not been running for office. But nonprofits created to support a candidate or his message have different requirements.
The Alliance for a New America, the group that received Mellon's millions, was kept at arm's length from Edwards, a requirement of campaign finance law. Nonprofits such as this, known as 527 groups, primarily finance media messaging that most often closely aligns with a particular candidate's stance.
The alliance was launched by Nick Baldick, Edwards' campaign manager in 2004. At least one of the donors, San Francisco attorney Jim Finberg, said he was advised the money would pay for media ads in Iowa supporting universal health care. He knew the group was linked to Edwards; by law, however, Edwards couldn't be involved in the group's activities.
According to Federal Election Commission filings, the alliance in 2008 paid $3.3 million in "political consulting" costs to a limited liability corporation called AFNA. That LLC was registered in Virginia in 2004 and dissolved in 2008. Efforts to reach anyone associated with the company failed. Baldick could not be reached.
Edwards partly funded his unofficial launch into the Democratic primary race with funds from a different nonprofit he started in 2005.
The Center for Promise and Opportunity, a nonprofit organization allowed to shield donors' identity but allowed some political expenditures, paid for much of Edwards' early groundwork in New Hampshire and Iowa.
The organization's statement of purpose filed along with its tax disclosures never mention Edwards. Edwards was the center's honorary chairman, according to media reports in 2006.
"They play this charade. Refrain from saying they are a candidate, so they don't have to follow the rules," said Paul S. Ryan of the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan group that monitors campaign finance issues. "If they play carefully enough, they can avoid running afoul of the law."
The group's statement of purpose suggests its staff will meet with poor people to better understand their plight and will investigate America's security challenges. Among other evidence of its progress in 2007, the group's tax filing cited "meetings with experts and advocates on issues like fatherhood and teen pregnancy."
In 2006, Edwards traveled the nation, walking picket lines and talking to crowds about poverty and his regret in voting to fund the war in Iraq, travel paid for by the Center for Promise and Opportunity.
The center also paid for Edwards' trips abroad, where he visited developing nations plagued by squalor. Rielle Hunter was at his side filming.
When news of their affair broke in the National Enquirer in 2007, Edwards denied it. He admitted his infidelity on national television in August 2008, after the Enquirer ran pictures it identified as Edwards visiting Hunter at a Los Angeles hotel.
Hunter gave birth to a daughter in February 2008. Edwards has denied being the father. A former campaign aide, Andrew Young, claimed paternity. Edwards said he told his wife, Elizabeth, about the affair at the end of 2006 before the couple learned that her cancer had returned.
The suspicion that some of Edwards' campaign money may have been used to pay Hunter or Young angers some of his former donors.
"If they were stealing money to cover up John's personal failings, it is profoundly disappointing," said Finberg, the attorney who contributed $25,000 to the Alliance for a New America. "My heart goes out to Elizabeth Edwards. I am sorry this is how she has to spend her last days on earth and how their children will remember their father."
What he's doing now
John Edwards has been keeping a low profile since his admission of infidelity last summer.
Edwards said he is living outside Chapel Hill with his wife and children and is volunteering for nonprofits dedicated to poverty issues in America and abroad.
According to the New York Daily News, Elizabeth Edwards says in a book to be released May 12 that when her husband told her about the affair, she vomited, then asked him not to pursue the presidency.
Much about Edwards' fall may never be known. Grand juries meet in private; they are sworn to secrecy.
Campaigns, candidates and their travels can breed as many mysteries. On one of Hunter's videos, Edwards spoke to her as he flew to Iowa, saying he wanted Americans to see his true character in the 2008 campaign. He recited the outline of a speech, then leaned in to bemoan the chaos of campaigns.
He asks: "Do you think most people have any idea what we're doing when we're not on the stage? All this, everything else that we do?"
News researchers Brooke Cain and Denise Jones contributed to this report.
