John Edwards | |
---|---|
Spouse(s) | Elizabeth Anania ( m. 1977; sep. 2010) (died before possible divorce) |
Domestic partner | Rielle Hunter (2006–2015) |
Children | 5, including Cate |
Education | Clemson University North Carolina State University (BA) University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (JD) |
Roosevelt was at work in the New York state legislature attempting to get a government reform bill passed when he was summoned home by his family. He returned home to find his mother, Mittie, had succumbed to typhoid fever. On the same day, his wife of four years, Alice Lee, died of Bright’s disease, a severe kidney ailment.
In August 2000, Bilott called DuPont’s lawyer, Bernard Reilly, and explained that he knew what was going on. It was a brief conversation. The Tennants settled. The firm would receive its contingency fee. The whole business might have ended right there. But Bilott was not satisfied.
Only two days before her death, Alice Lee had given birth to the couple’s daughter, Alice. The double tragedy devastated Roosevelt. He ordered those around him not to mention his wife’s name.
He was not convicted of a crime, but the revelation that he engaged in an extramarital affair and fathered a child while his wife, Elizabeth, was dying of cancer gravely damaged his public image and ended his career in politics.
December 7, 2010Elizabeth Edwards / Date of death
Elizabeth EdwardsJohn Edwards / Spouse (m. 1977–2010)Mary Elizabeth Anania Edwards was an American attorney, author, and health care activist. She was married to John Edwards, the former U.S. Senator from North Carolina who was the 2004 United States Democratic vice-presidential nominee. Wikipedia
John EdwardsElizabeth Edwards / Husband (m. 1977–2010)
On the morning of July 6, 2004, Kerry announced the selection of John Edwards as his running mate.
Edwards is now a personal injury lawyer in Pitt County, North Carolina.
Frances Quinn HunterCate EdwardsEmma Claire EdwardsJohn Edwards/Daughters
Sarah EdwardsJonathan Edwards / Wife (m. 1727–1758)Sarah Edwards was an American missionary, and the wife of theologian Jonathan Edwards. Her husband was initially drawn to her spiritual openness, direct relationship with God, and periods of spiritual ecstasy. As a theological student at Yale, he had longed to have a personal relationship with God. Wikipedia
61 years (1949–2010)Elizabeth Edwards / Age at death
Oakwood Cemetery, Raleigh, NCElizabeth Edwards / Place of burialHistoric Oakwood Cemetery was founded in 1869 in North Carolina's capital, Raleigh, near the North Carolina State Capitol in the city's Historic Oakwood neighborhood. Wikipedia
The 2000 United States presidential election was the 54th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7, 2000. Republican candidate George W. Bush, the governor of Texas and eldest son of the 41st president, George H. W. Bush, won the election, defeating incumbent Vice President Al Gore.
In the vice presidential debate, Dick Cheney told Edwards they had never met because of Edwards's frequent absences from the Senate, but that was later proven to be incorrect.
On January 8, Edwards placed a distant third in the New Hampshire Democratic primary with just under 17% (48,818 votes). On January 26, Edwards again placed third in the primary in South Carolina – his birth state – which he had carried in 2004, and he placed third in the non-binding January 29 vote in Florida.
In 1984, Edwards was assigned to a medical malpractice lawsuit that had been perceived to be unwinnable; the firm had accepted it only as a favor to an attorney and state senator who did not want to keep it. Nevertheless, Edwards won a $3.7 million verdict on behalf of his client, who had suffered permanent brain and nerve damage after a doctor prescribed an overdose of the anti-alcoholism drug Antabuse during alcohol aversion therapy. In other cases, Edwards sued the American Red Cross three times, alleging transmission of AIDS through tainted blood products, resulting in a confidential settlement each time, and defended a North Carolina newspaper against a libel charge.
As Edwards had been building support essentially since his election to the Senate, he led the initial campaign fundraising, amassing over $7 million during the first quarter of 2003 – more than half of which came from individuals associated with the legal profession, particularly Edwards's fellow trial lawyers, their families, and employees.
A football star in high school, Edwards was the first person in his family to attend college. He attended Clemson University for one semester before transferring to North Carolina State University. He graduated from NCSU with high honors with a bachelor's degree in textile technology and a 3.8 GPA in 1974, and later earned his Juris Doctor from the University of North Carolina School of Law (UNC) with honors.
He filed at least twenty similar lawsuits in the years following, and achieved verdicts and settlements of more than $60 million for his clients. Similar lawsuits followed across the country. When asked about an increase in Caesarean deliveries nationwide, perhaps to avoid similar medical malpractice lawsuits, Edwards said, "The question is, would you rather have cases where that happens instead of having cases where you don't intervene and a child either becomes disabled for life or dies in utero?"
He was also a consultant for Fortress Investment Group LLC. Following his 2008 campaign, Edwards was indicted by a federal grand jury on June 3, 2011, on six felony charges of violating multiple federal campaign contribution laws to cover up an extramarital affair to which he eventually admitted.
Wilbur Tennant explained that he and his four siblings had run the cattle farm since their father abandoned them as children. They had seven cows then. Over the decades they steadily acquired land and cattle, until 200 cows roamed more than 600 hilly acres. The property would have been even larger had his brother Jim and Jim’s wife, Della, not sold 66 acres in the early ’80s to DuPont. The company wanted to use the plot for a landfill for waste from its factory near Parkersburg, called Washington Works, where Jim was employed as a laborer. Jim and Della did not want to sell, but Jim had been in poor health for years, mysterious ailments that doctors couldn’t diagnose, and they needed the money.
By the ’90s, Bilott discovered, DuPont understood that PFOA caused cancerous testicular, pancreatic and liver tumors in lab animals. One laboratory study suggested possible DNA damage from PFOA exposure, and a study of workers linked exposure with prostate cancer.
In 1991, DuPont scientists determined an internal safety limit for PFOA concentration in drinking water: one part per billion. The same year, DuPont found that water in one local district contained PFOA levels at three times that figure. Despite internal debate, it declined to make the information public.
With the trial looming, Bilott stumbled upon a letter DuPont had sent to the E.P.A. that mentioned a substance at the landfill with a cryptic name: ‘‘PFOA.’’ In all his years working with chemical companies, Bilott had never heard of PFOA. It did not appear on any list of regulated materials, nor could he find it in Taft’s in-house library. The chemistry expert that he had retained for the case did, however, vaguely recall an article in a trade journal about a similar-sounding compound: PFOS, a soaplike agent used by the technology conglomerate 3M in the fabrication of Scotchgard.
DuPont rechristened the plot Dry Run Landfill, named after the creek that ran through it. The same creek flowed down to a pasture where the Tennants grazed their cows. Not long after the sale, Wilbur told Bilott, the cattle began to act deranged. They had always been like pets to the Tennants. At the sight of a Tennant they would amble over, nuzzle and let themselves be milked. No longer. Now when they saw the farmers, they charged.
Bilott hunted through his files for other references to PFOA, which he learned was short for perfluorooctanoic acid. But there was nothing. He asked DuPont to share all documentation related to the substance; DuPont refused. In the fall of 2000, Bilott requested a court order to force them. Against DuPont’s protests, the order was granted. Dozens of boxes containing thousands of unorganized documents began to arrive at Taft’s headquarters: private internal correspondence, medical and health reports and confidential studies conducted by DuPont scientists. There were more than 110,000 pages in all, some half a century old. Bilott spent the next few months on the floor of his office, poring over the documents and arranging them in chronological order. He stopped answering his office phone. When people called his secretary, she explained that he was in the office but had not been able to reach the phone in time, because he was trapped on all sides by boxes.
Not only had Taft recouped its losses, but DuPont was providing clean water to the communities named in the suit. Bilott had every reason to walk away.
But it was during that presidential campaign that all of the drama, scandal and controversy would start: Edwards had an extra-marital affair with a woman named Rielle Hunter, eventually fathering a daughter named Quinn with her, while his wife, Elizabeth, was stricken with terminal breast cancer. She ultimately separated Edwards before she died, though not immediately — she stood by him after he admitted the affair, but when he confessed to fathering the child, she started divorce proceedings.
As the Los Angeles Times detailed at the time, attorney Allison Van Laningham defended Edwards in court as having "committed sins but no crimes," arguing that it was "humiliation he was trying to avoid all along.".
With his political career already in shambles, and considered a pop-cultural punchline and a cruel pariah for cheating on his gravely ill wife, Edwards then faced down criminal allegations that he misused campaign funds to try to cover up the affair with Hunter. He was indicted by a North Carolina grand jury, and faced six felony charges in 2012, as CNN detailed: conspiracy, four counts of illegal campaign contributions, and giving false statements.
His defense team was successful in the end, however — they successfully argued that Edwards' actions might have been immoral, but not criminal. As the Los Angeles Times detailed at the time, attorney Allison Van Laningham defended Edwards in court as having "committed sins but no crimes," arguing that it was "humiliation he was trying to avoid all along." He was ultimately cleared on one count, received a mistrial on the other five, and was home free when federal prosecutors dropped the case weeks later.
The wronged wife of former presidential candidate John Edwards, who died last month after a courageous battle with breast cancer, left everything in her sole possession to their three children. (AP)
Edwards was married for 33 years to former North Carolina Democratic Sen. John Edwards, who twice ran for President and cheated on her even after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
The cancer retreated after surgery and chemotherapy and John Edwards decided to run again in 2008.
John Edwards was not mentioned even once in will - though his work as a trial lawyer generated the family's fortune.
When Edwards was questioned at a New Orleans event on July 23, he stated, "I have no idea what you're asking about. I've responded, consistently, to these tabloid allegations by saying I don't respond to these lies and you know that ... and I stand by that." On the same day, Hunter appeared on the television program Extra, describing the Enquirer story as "completely unfounded and ridiculous".
Mickey Kaus, a journalist at Slate, speculated that the lack of mainstream coverage was motivated by a desire not to harm Elizabeth Edwards, who was fighting cancer at the time. Kaus also considered the possibility of news organizations taking a "wait-and-see" attitude, pending the results of the 2008 Iowa caucuses.
Several prominent sites criticized the omission of information about the allegations, most notably Gawker.com. For instance, as of August 6, CNN had not mentioned the story and MSNBC had mentioned it only once. Several pundits stated that Edwards was "fair game" for reporting on the allegations because he had been recently identified as a potential candidate for vice president or attorney general for Barack Obama, and that Edward s himself had made his marital fidelity an issue in his campaign.
On June 3, 2011, Edwards was indicted by a North Carolina grand jury on six felony charges. He faced a maximum sentence of thirty years in prison and a $ 1.5 million fine, or a USD250,000 fine and/or five years imprisonment per charge. The indictment came after the failure of intensive negotiations for a plea bargain. The agreement would have meant that Edwards would have been required to plead guilty to three misdemeanor campaign finance law violations, in addition to a six-month prison sentence, but would have allowed Edwards to keep his law license.
After Edwards's admission, his wife Elizabeth announced a separation from her husband, with an intention to file for divorce. When Edwards first admitted to the affair, he stated that Elizabeth was in remission from breast cancer.
Representatives from the Edwards campaign stated that the material could not be used due to campaign finance law. Several days later, The Huffington Post reported that the videos had been reposted to YouTube by an anonymous user.
The team of Enquirer reporters encountered Edwards on the hotel premises sometime after 2 a.m. on the morning of July 22. According to Perel, Edwards, who was not a registered guest of the hotel, retreated from the reporters to a washroom, where he remained until being escorted from the premises by hotel security.
After hearing about the Great Peruvian earthquake of 1970, which caused an avalanche and additional destruction, Pat initiated a "volunteer American relief drive" and flew to the country, where she aided in taking relief supplies to earthquake victims. She toured damaged regions and embraced homeless townspeople; they trailed her as she climbed up hills of rubble and under fallen beams. Her trip was heralded in newspapers around the world for her acts of compassion and disregard for her personal safety or comfort, and her presence was a direct boost to political relations. One Peruvian official commented: "Her coming here meant more than anything else President Nixon could have done," and an editorial in Peru's Lima Prensa said that Peruvians could never forget Pat Nixon. Fran Lewine of the Associated Press wrote that no First Lady had ever undertaken a "mercy mission" resulting in such "diplomatic side effects". On the trip, the Peruvian government presented her with the Grand Cross of the Order of the Sun, the highest Peruvian distinction and the oldest such honor in the Americas.
Pat Nixon was listed on the Gallup Organization 's top-ten list of the most admired women fourteen times, from 1959 to 1962 and 1968 to 1979. She was ranked third in 1969, second in 1970 and 1971, and first in 1972. She remained on the top-ten list until 1979, five years after her husband left office.
Pat Nixon developed and led a coordinated effort to improve the authenticity of the White House as an historic residence and museum. She added more than 600 paintings, antiques and furnishings to the Executive Mansion and its collections, the largest number of acquisitions by any administration; this greatly, and dramatically, expanded upon Jacqueline Kennedy 's more publicized efforts. She created the Map Room and renovated the China room, and refurbished nine other rooms, including the Red Room, Blue Room and Green Room. She worked with engineers to develop an exterior lighting system for the entire White House, making it glow a soft white. She ordered the American flag atop the White House flown day and night, even when the president was not in residence.
As First Lady, Pat Nixon promoted a number of charitable causes, including volunteerism.
In 1937, Pat Ryan graduated cum laude from USC with a Bachelor of Science degree in merchandising, together with a certificate to teach at the high school level, which USC deemed equivalent to a master's degree. Pat accepted a position as a high school teacher in Whittier, California.
One of her major initiatives as First Lady was the promotion of volunteerism, in which she encouraged Americans to address social problems at the local level through volunteering at hospitals, civic organizations, and rehabilitation centers. She stated, "Our success as a nation depends on our willingness to give generously of ourselves for the welfare and enrichment of the lives of others." She undertook a "Vest Pockets for Volunteerism" trip, where she visited ten different volunteer programs. Susan Porter, in charge of the First Lady's scheduling, noted that Pat "saw volunteers as unsung heroes who hadn't been encouraged or given credit for their sacrifices and who needed to be". Her second volunteerism tour—she traveled 4,130 miles (6,647 km) within the United States—helped to boost the notion that not all students were protesting the Vietnam War. She herself belonged to several volunteer groups, including Women in Community Services and Urban Services League, and was an advocate of the Domestic Volunteer Service Act of 1973, a bill that encouraged volunteerism by providing benefits to a number of volunteer organizations. Some reporters viewed her choice of volunteerism as safe and dull compared to the initiatives undertaken by Lady Bird Johnson and Jacqueline Kennedy.
Pat Nixon viewing pandas in a Chinese zoo in 1972.
Michael Cohen’s recent admission brings back memories of Edwards’ indictment. So now, everyone wants to know where John Edwards is today.
The former senator was charged with using campaign funds to conceal his relationship with his mistress from the public. The trial grabbed headlines in 2012. Edwards’ defense argued that most of the money was given as gifts by friends and was not entirely part of the campaign fund.
He was accused of using campaign funds to conceal his mistress. Edwards was indicted in 2011 and accused of covering up an affair he had while running a presidential campaign in 2008.
In his stellar career, Edwards was a vice-presidential nominee in the 2004 election and even ran a campaign for president in 2008.
From these humble beginnings, Edwards worked in a law firm for several years before starting his own firm in 1993 in Raleigh, North Carolina.
John Edwards’ wife passed away in December 2010. She legally separated from Edwards before her death.
John Edwards’ Mistress. John Edwards’ affair with Rielle Hunter reportedly took place while his wife, Elizabeth Edwards, was dying of cancer. Hunter gave birth to Edwards’ daughter in 2008. He initially denied that he was the baby’s father, but later admitted that he was, indeed the father of the child.