Wife of Edwards aide breaks down on stand

GREENSBORO, N.C. -- The wife of an former aide to John Edwards broke down on the stand yesterday as she recounted how the candidate asked the couple to hide an affair he was having and justified using wealthy donors' money to do it.

Testifying at Edwards' campaign corruption trial, Cheri Young said she huddled around a phone in her Chapel Hill home in December 2007 with her husband, Andrew Young, and Edwards' pregnant mistress, Rielle Hunter.

On the call, she said, Edwards emphasized the need to preserve his campaign and keep the affair from his cancer-stricken wife, Elizabeth. It was a couple of weeks before the 2008 Iowa caucuses, and two tabloid reporters had already tracked Hunter from a doctor's appointment to the Youngs' home.

Edwards made the plan sound "as if it was for the good of the country," Cheri Young said.

Asked by a prosecutor why she went along with it, Young put her hands together, pressed them to her chin and bowed her head as if in prayer. She began to weep, and U.S. District Court Judge Catherine C. Eagles excused the jury to give her time to compose herself.

About 25 feet away, Edwards sat back in his chair and put two fingers to his pursed lips. As Young dabbed her tears with a tissue, the former U.S. Senator glanced at his watch.

Once the jury returned, Young answered the question.

"I felt like everything had been dumped in my lap," she said. "Everybody was on board but me . . . I didn't want the campaign to explode and for it to be my fault. I ultimately decided to live with a lie."

She said Edwards suggested it would be only a one-day story if her husband took responsibility for the baby. " 'Nobody cares about two staffers having an affair," ' Young re -- AP