Free Republic

A government watchdog group famous for aggressively advocating prosecution against unethical lawmakers is seeking dismissal of a criminal case against former presidential candidate John Edwards. The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, requested Wednesday to file a friend-of-the-court brief in support of dismissing an indictment against Edwards for alleged violations of campaign finance law. “In the U.S., we don’t prosecute people for being loathsome, we prosecute them for violating the law,” CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan said. “This case suggests some in the Department of Justice may have lost sight of this principle.” This is the first...

Jenn Sterger, the subject of the NFL's investigation into Brett Favre's behavior, would decline the league's interview request if she and the Vikings quarterback reach a financial settlement that would prevent her from any potential legal action against Favre, the Pioneer Press has learned. The settlement would include a confidentiality agreement between the two that would effectively stop the NFL, which does not have subpoena power, from speaking with Sterger about Favre. The NFL began an investigation Oct. 8 after Deadspin.com reported that Favre allegedly had sent inappropriate messages and pictures to Sterger in 2008 when he was the New...

Tiger Woods is banned from letting girlfriends near his kids in a divorce deal netting his ex a record $750 million settlement, The Sun reported Wednesday. The golfer agreed to keep single women away from daughter Sam, three, and son Charlie, one. He can bring a new flame into their lives only if he marries her. In return, former wife Elin Nordegren ,30, gets the biggest payout ever seen in a celebrity divorce. But she can never publicly speak out over his alleged flings with socialite Rachel Uchitel, reality star Jaimee Grubbs, porn queen Joslyn James and up to 17...

It was June of 2002, just five days before the Republican primary for Utah's 1st Congressional District, and Kevin and Tanya Garn were frantically trying to reach Cheryl Maher. "Please, please call me," read an e-mail from Tanya Garn's "supermommie" account. "I know the most healing thing you can do is talk to me." Maher had been talking to reporters, alleging a 1985 encounter with Garn, her boss at the time, when she was 15 and he was 30 and married. Garn had resigned as Utah House majority leader a day before the flurry of e-mails began. On Thursday, a...

SALT LAKE CITY — Cheryl Maher said Friday that Utah House Majority Leader Kevin Garn is lying about having no physical contact with her when they went hot-tubbing in the nude when she was 15 years old. She also says they had a long-term relationship at that time and contends that he had affairs with others. Also, Garn may have violated election laws by not disclosing on federal forms that he paid Maher $150,000 in 2002 — the year he ran for Congress — to keep quiet. "He is not being completely honest," Maher told the Deseret News by telephone...

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- A late-night confession by Utah's House majority leader about sitting nude in a hot tub with a minor 25 years ago has shocked this conservative state's political establishment but has not prompted calls from party leaders for him to resign. Rep. Kevin Garn, 55, acknowledged the indiscretion late Thursday immediately after the Legislature adjourned for the session. He said he paid the woman, Cheryl Maher, now 40, $150,000 to keep quiet about the episode when he unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2002.

Just moments after the close of the 2010 legislative session, House majority leader Kevin Garn dropped a bombshell in front of all his colleagues that eight years ago he paid a woman $150,000 to keep a hot tub incident quiet. That incident happened 25 years ago, he said. “Twenty-five years ago I made a mistake that has come back to haunt me,” said Garn as his wife sat quietly next to him. “I expect to suffer public humiliation and embarrassment.” Garn said there was no sexual contact with the girl who was “half his age” and that he has told...

Hush money plagues Garn / Representative says he gave woman $150,000 after 1985 nude incident in hot tub Statement from Representative Kevin Garn - Delivered from the floor of the House on March 11, 2010 SALT LAKE CITY -- A top leader in the Utah House of Representatives, Rep. Kevin Garn, 55, admits he paid a woman to keep quiet about an incident in a hot tub 25 years ago. Garn, a prominent Layton businessman, said Thursday he paid a former Cedar City woman $150,000 eight years ago and that the deal included a confidentiality agreement. "This came up eight...

(AP) A former aide to John Edwards says in court documents that a copy of a sex tape featuring his former boss has been sent to the FBI. Andrew Young said Friday he has the original copy of the tape showing Edwards in a sexual encounter in a safe deposit box in Atlanta. He said a copy of the tape was sent to his Washington attorney, who turned it over to federal investigators. Young has said the tape shows Edwards and a woman he believes to be the two-time presidential candidate's mistress, Rielle Hunter. Federal investigators have been looking into...

Payments from a wealthy heiress to the Mellon fortune through a Monroe, N.C., interior decorator helped subsidize the cover-up of John Edwards' affair with Rielle Hunter. The decorator, Bryan Huffman, eventually became the conduit for as much as $700,000 from Rachel "Bunny" Mellon – what the Edwards camp called "Bunny money" – to help cover the expenses of Rielle Hunter and Andrew Young, Edwards aide who claimed to be the father of her baby. Mellon's money was part of more than $1.5 million that Young told ABC News was used for the cover-up. He said the money paid for a...

Ted Kennedy slept with more than a thousand women - and spent at least $10 million in hush money over the years to keep his skirt-chasing a secret! The late senator made those sensational confessions in a chapter of his autobiography, but horrified family members and advisers cut them out. Before he died of brain cancer at age 77 on Aug. 25, the womanizing politician also revealed that he planned to seduce Mary Jo Kopechne on the night she drowned, said a close source. "While dictating his memoirs into a tape recorder, Ted decided to tell the whole truth about...

Former presidential candidate John Edwards is said to be ready to admit that he fathered a love child. But Hades may have a skating rink before his wife, Elizabeth, signs off on such a confession. A source close to Elizabeth Edwards says the former Senator's wife is sniping at former Edwards mistress Rielle Hunter via an online pseudonym. Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2009/09/27/2009-09-27_john_edwards_exmistress_rielle_hunter_targeted_by_elizabeth_edwards_in_blog_comm.html#ixzz0SL2aaST3 Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/gossip/2009/09/27/2009-09-27_john_edwards_exmistress_rielle_hunter_targeted_by_elizabeth_edwards_in_blog_comm.html#ixzz0SL2aaST3 As a grand jury in North Carolina considers whether Edwards misused campaign funds to cover up the scandal, Elizabeth still can't abide his former mistress, Rielle Hunter. Word is Elizabeth vehemently opposed the plan, now in...

The son of the couple at the center of the sex scandal that has engulfed Sen. John Ensign was being paid by National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2008 at the same time his mother was having an affair with the Nevada Republican. Both Doug and Cynthia Hampton were already working in senior positions for Ensign when their son Brandon Hampton was hired to do “research policy consulting” for the NRSC in March 2008. The younger Hampton, 19, was paid $5,400 before he left the Ensign office in August last year, Federal Election Commission records show. That means during March and...

The news that federal prosecutors are investigating John Edwards' presidential campaign payments to his mistress brings a sense of satisfaction. The phoniest man in American politics is finally getting the comeuppance he so richly deserves. With his $400 haircuts and investments in predatory lenders, all while saying ending poverty was a "moral issue" and the "cause of my life," Edwards set new standards for hypocrisy as he sought the Democratic nomination. His contrived compassion was a joke among rivals. And that was before we learned he had an affair with a campaign aide. Yet any sense of justice served is...

Washington, DC (AHN) - Former U.S. senator and Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards acknowledged to a North Carolina newspaper that federal investigators are looking into whether campaign funds were used to hush up an affair he was having with a videographer hired by his campaign.Edwards told the Raleigh News & Observer that he has "made available to the United States both the people and the information necessary to help [investigators] get the issue resolved efficiently and in a timely manner." He would not discuss the issue with the newspaper. Sheila Krumholz, the executive director of the campaign watchdog group Open...

RALEIGH Federal investigators are sifting through the records of money that helped John Edwards' presidential campaign to determine if any was used to keep quiet his affair with Rielle Hunter. Edwards, a Democrat and former U.S. senator, acknowledged the investigation to The News & Observer. “I am confident that no funds from my campaign were used improperly,” Edwards said in a statement. “However, I know that it is the role of government to ensure that this is true. We have made available to the United States both the people and the information necessary to help them get the issue resolved...

The wife of Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Mahoney filed for divorce today, one week after news broke that Mahoney had an affair with a former staffer and paid her $121,903 to stop a threatened lawsuit. Terry Mahoney filed papers at the North County Courthouse in Palm Beach Gardens, which said the marriage is "irretrievably broken". Terry Mahoney filed for divorce from her husband, Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Mahoney, who put his mistress on his congressional and campaign payrolls and then paid $121,903 to hush her threatened lawsuit. She appeared with her husband, but did not speak last Tuesday when Mahoney...

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) - A married congressman who faces accusations that he had an affair with a former aide and paid her to keep quiet about it also was having an affair with a second woman around the same time, a person close to his campaign told The Associated Press on Tuesday. Details of the second affair came hours after Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Mahoney held a news conference to address a story, first reported by ABC News, that he had been involved with the former aide. Mahoney acknowledged he had caused "embarrassment and heartache" to his family...

The FBI has reportedly begun its own preliminary investigation into an ABC News report that West Palm Beach Congressman Tim Mahoney (D-FL) hired an alleged mistress to work on his official staff and then paid her $121,000 to keep her from going public and filing suit after she was fired. -snip It would be unusual but not unprecedented for the FBI to open an investigation into a member of Congress three weeks before the election.

Rep. Tim Mahoney paid $121,000 to a former mistress who worked on his staff and sued him after he threatened her job when she tried to end the relationship, former and current staff aides told ABC News on Monday. Mahoney, D-Fla., won his congressional seat in 2006 after Rep. Mark Foley, a Republican, was forced to resign in the wake of a scandal involving a congressional page. According to ABC News, Mahoney, who is married, started an affair with Patricia Allen while campaigning against Foley on a morality platform. Allen came on to his staff after he won the election...