Librarian: Edwards asked heiress for $3M

GREENSBORO, N.C. -- Shortly before his 2011 indictment on corruption charges, John Edwards called the heiress whose money helped hide his pregnant mistress and asked for $3 million more, a witness testified yesterday at the trial of the former presidential hopeful.

A librarian, Tony L. Willis, testified that his boss, 101-year-old Rachel "Bunny" Mellon, sought his help in drafting a letter. He said Mellon told him she wanted to explain her reasons for declining Edwards' request for the money for the next phase of his life.

Willis said the letter, at the direction of one of Mellon's lawyers, was never sent.

The jury considering Edwards' fate heard nothing, however, about the financial request, made about three weeks before his June 2011 indictment on six counts related to alleged campaign finance violations. As a prosecutor questioned Willis, responsible for a vast private botanical library on Mellon's 2,100-acre Virginia estate, an Edwards' defense lawyer objected. The judge sent the jury out of the room until she could hear what the witness had to say.

Edwards' lawyer, Alan Duncan, argued that the 2011 request was irrelevant to the indictment, which focuses on what prosecutors called about $1 million in secret payments from Mellon and another supporter of the Edwards 2008 White House bid. Financial records in evidence show that some of that money was used to help hide Rielle Hunter, Edwards' then-pregnant mistress, from tabloid reporters.

A cornerstone of the candidate's defense is that his close aide Andrew Young had been the one who asked Mellon for $725,000 in 2007 to take care of a "personal need" of the former senator. Edwards denies knowing about the so-called "Bunny" money, much of which Young admits he spent on building a dream home.

Earlier, Mellon lawyer and money manager Alex D. Forger testified that the heiress believed the $725,000 was intended as a gift to Edwards, not as a campaign contribution. She had already given the maximum allowed $2,300 to Edwards' campaign and would give another $6.4 million to a political action committee and other organizations for his White House bid. Forger said the $6.4 million was "quite small" compared with the heiress' overall net worth.

In the afternoon, developer Tim Tobin recounted receiving a call from Young shortly before Christmas 2007. "He said the senator had a big favor to ask from me," Tobin said.

Young asked Tobin to meet him at his house next door, and cautioned him not to ask any questions and not to talk about what he saw. With Young were his wife and a woman Tobin couldn't immediately identify. "She had on dark glasses . . . and she was obviously pregnant," he testified.

Tobin drove the group to Raleigh-Durham airport, where under lights in the hangar, he thought the pregnant woman looked familiar. He had sat next to Hunter a year earlier, in a group that went with Edwards to a Dave Matthews Band concert. The next day, Tobin said, Edwards called and "thanked me for what I did for him," without directly mentioning what it was that he had done.