Former Edwards aide testifies about affair

GREENSBORO, N.C. -- Another former close aide to John Edwards testified yesterday about bungled efforts to keep the former presidential candidate's affair hidden from staff members, including an awkward encounter when she showed up at a hotel weeks after her work filming Edwards had ended.

For months in 2006, John Davis said staff members had been concerned that the woman hired as a videographer was becoming too close to Edwards. For example, while other staff members called him "Sen. Edwards," Rielle Hunter called him "Johnny" or "John," Davis said.

"Everyone else on the team had a political background. . . . She talked a lot about meditation and yogis," Davis said.

Davis, who traveled with Edwards in 2006 and 2007, is one of several former aides who have testified about their suspicion or knowledge of the affair during Edwards' campaign finance corruption trial. At issue is money from wealthy donors that was used in an attempt to keep the candidate's affair with Hunter out of public view.

Edwards' attorneys have said he didn't know about the money, and he's pleaded not guilty to six counts related to campaign-finance violations. He faces up to 30 years in prison and $1.5 million in fines if convicted on all counts.

Hunter's contract with the Edwards organization wasn't renewed at the end of 2006, days after a campaign event at which Davis said he saw the Democrat's wife crying after seeing her husband with the videographer.

But Davis said Hunter didn't go away. In February 2007, he ran into her in an elevator at the candidate's Detroit hotel.

"She told me that she and Sen. Edwards were very much in love and that he was concerned that I had seen her," Davis said. The next morning, Edwards called Davis to his room and, without being asked, denied that he was having an affair with Hunter.