In Edwards scandal, a chapter winds down with inquiry

Edwards, the one-term senator who came close to being elected vice president in 2004 and ran a credible campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, remains largely secluded at his 100-acre estate here.

But a federal grand jury in nearby Raleigh is investigating whether any crimes were committed in connection with campaign laws in an effort to conceal his extramarital affair with a woman named Rielle Hunter. At the same time, Edwards is moving toward an abrupt reversal in his public posture; associates said in interviews that he is considering declaring that he is the father of Hunter’s 19-month-old daughter, something that he once flatly asserted in a television interview was not possible.

Friends and other associates of Edwards and his wife of 32 years, Elizabeth, say she has resisted the idea of her husband’s claiming paternity. Elizabeth Edwards, who is battling cancer, “has yet to be brought around,’’ said one family friend, who like others spoke about the situation on the condition of anonymity, pointing to the complicated and delicate nature of the issue.

The situation may become more fraught, as people who know Hunter said she was planning to move with her daughter, Frances, from New Jersey to North Carolina in coming months.

For her grand jury appearance on Aug. 6, Hunter took her daughter to the federal courthouse in downtown Raleigh.

Hunter testified to the grand jury in detail about her relationship with Edwards, lawyers involved in the case said, as well as the benefits she was provided by his supporters after she became pregnant. Michael Crichtley, her lawyer, declined to comment.

According to people familiar with the grand jury investigation, prosecutors are considering a complicated and novel legal issue: whether payments to a candidate’s mistress to ensure her silence (and thus maintain the candidate’s viability) should be considered campaign donations and thus whether they should be reported.

When Edwards was running for president, and even later when he still held out hope of a senior Cabinet position in the Obama administration, two of his wealthy patrons, through a once-trusted Edwards aide, quietly provided Hunter with large financial benefits, including a new BMW and lodging, that were used to keep her out of public view.

Edwards dismissed an initial report in The National Enquirer in 2007 that he was having an affair, and the matter was largely ignored by the mainstream news media. But in July 2008, The Enquirer published an article with photographs of a clandestine meeting Edwards had with Hunter and her daughter in a Los Angeles hotel. Days later, Edwards acknowledged the affair to “Nightline’’ on ABC, offering contrition but insisting that the child could not be his because of the timing and brevity of their intimacy.

Wade M. Smith, a prominent Raleigh lawyer who represents Edwards, declined to comment on the paternity issue directly, but said in a statement that “there may be a statement on that subject at some point, but there is no timetable and we will see how we feel about it as events unfold.’’

The notion that Edwards is the father has been reinforced by the account of Andrew Young, once a close aide to Edwards, who had signed an affidavit asserting that he was the father of Hunter’s child. Young, who has since renounced that statement, has told publishers in a book proposal that Edwards knew all along that he was the child’s father. He said Edwards pleaded with him to accept responsibility falsely, saying that would reduce the story to one of a political aide’s infidelity.

In the proposal, which The New York Times examined, Young asserts that he assisted the affair by setting up private meetings between Edwards and Hunter. He wrote that Edwards once calmed an anxious Hunter by promising her that after his wife died, he would marry her in a rooftop ceremony in New York with an appearance by the Dave Matthews Band.

Once the favorite son of much of North Carolina with many supporters beyond, John Edwards is now largely disdained. To many, it was not only his liaison with Hunter, but also what seemed his elaborate effort to cover up his behavior to preserve his political ambitions.

Shortly after he withdrew from the race in January 2008, Edwards and his wife were given a huge ovation when they attended a basketball game at the University of North Carolina. But a few months ago, when the couple showed up for dinner at a Chapel Hill restaurant, diners averted their eyes and stared at their plates, according to a person who was there.

Investigators are examining the benefits Hunter received from the two Edwards supporters, Fred Baron, a wealthy trial lawyer from Dallas who has since died, and Rachel Mellon, known as Bunny, a 99-year-old heiress to the Mellon fortune. Before his death, Baron said in a statement that he paid Hunter and helped move her and Young to California and other places on his own initiative, without informing Edwards. Edwards has asserted that he knew nothing of the benefits provided to Hunter by Baron or Mellon.

In his book proposal, however, Young depicts Baron as going to great lengths to help a knowing and eager Edwards conceal from the public both his affair with Hunter and his paternity of her daughter.