Johnny Reid Edwards[1] (born June 10, 1953) is an American lawyer and former politician who represented North Carolina in the United States Senate from 1999 to 2005.

[3] Though he was not convicted of any crime, the revelation that he had engaged in an extramarital affair and fathered a child while his wife, Elizabeth Edwards, was dying of cancer, severely damaged his public image and effectively ended his political career.

[10] The Edwards family returned to North Carolina in 1981, settling in the capital of Raleigh, where he joined the firm of Tharrington, Smith & Hargrove.

[9][10] In 1984, Edwards was assigned to a medical malpractice lawsuit that had been perceived to be unwinnable; the firm had accepted it only as a favor to an attorney and state senator who did not want to keep it.

Nevertheless, Edwards won a $3.7 million verdict on behalf of his client, who had suffered permanent brain and nerve damage after a doctor prescribed an overdose of the anti-alcoholism drug Antabuse during alcohol aversion therapy.

[9] Winning this case established the North Carolina precedent of physician and hospital liability for failing to determine whether the patient understood the risks of a particular procedure.

Sta-Rite protested that an additional warning would have made no difference because the pool owners already knew the importance of keeping the cover secured.

In his closing arguments, Edwards spoke to the jury for an hour and a half and made reference to his son, Wade, who had been killed shortly before testimony began.

For their part in this case, Edwards and law partner David Kirby earned the Association of Trial Lawyers of America's national award for public service.

[9] In December 2003, during his first presidential campaign, Edwards (with John Auchard) published Four Trials, an autobiographical book focusing on cases from his legal career.

[27] During President Bill Clinton's 1999 impeachment trial in the Senate, Edwards was responsible for the deposition of witnesses Monica Lewinsky and fellow Democrat Vernon Jordan, Jr. During the 2000 presidential campaign, Edwards was on Democratic nominee Al Gore's vice presidential nominee short list (along with John Kerry and Joe Lieberman, Gore's eventual pick).

114) in the full Senate to authorize the use of military force against Iraq, which passed by a vote of 77 to 23,[31] On October 10, 2002, he stated that: "Almost no one disagrees with these basic facts: that Saddam Hussein is a tyrant and a menace; that he has weapons of mass destruction and that he is doing everything in his power to get nuclear weapons; that he has supported terrorists; that he is a grave threat to the region, to vital allies like Israel, and to the United States; and that he is thwarting the will of the international community and undermining the United Nations' credibility.

[36] Edwards generally supported expanding legal immigration to the United States while working with Mexico to provide better border security and stop illegal trafficking.

Edwards told interviewer Larry King that he doubted he would return to practice as a trial lawyer and showed no interest in succeeding Terry McAuliffe as the Democratic National Committee chairman.

In the following month, Edwards sent an email to his supporters and announced that he opposed the nomination of Judge John G. Roberts to become Chief Justice of the United States.

During the summer and fall of 2005, he visited homeless shelters and job training centers and spoke at events organized by ACORN, the NAACP and the SEIU.

He spoke in favor of an expansion of the earned income tax credit; in favor of a crackdown on predatory lending; an increase in the capital gains tax rate; housing vouchers for racial minorities (to integrate upper-income neighborhoods); and a program modeled on the Works Progress Administration to rehabilitate the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina.

[48] Edwards later helped set up an ACORN-administered "Louisiana Home Rescue Fund" seeded with $100,000, much of it from his pocket, to provide loans and grants to the families who were foreclosed on by Fortress-owned lenders.

On September 15, 2003, Edwards fulfilled a promise he made a year earlier as a guest on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to unofficially announce his intention to seek the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination.

On July 6, 2004, Kerry announced that Edwards would be his running mate; the decision was widely hailed in public opinion polls and by Democratic leaders.

"[67] On December 28, 2006, John Edwards officially announced his candidacy for President in the 2008 election from the yard of a home in New Orleans, Louisiana, that was being rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina destroyed it.

[68][69] Edwards stated that his main goals were eliminating poverty, fighting global warming, providing universal health care, and withdrawing troops from Iraq.

[80] On June 15, 2008, Edwards stepped back from his initial outright denial of interest in the position of Vice President, saying, "I'd take anything he asks me to think about seriously, but obviously this is something that I've done and it's not a job I'm seeking.

"[81] On June 20, 2008, the Associated Press reported that according to a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, the names of Edwards and Sam Nunn were on Obama's vice presidential shortlist.

After Edwards's January 21, 2010, admission that he fathered a child with his mistress, Elizabeth obtained a legal separation from him and intended to file for divorce after a mandatory one-year waiting period.

[97][98] In October 2007, The National Enquirer began a series of reports alleging an adulterous affair between Edwards and former campaign worker Rielle Hunter.

[103][104] In an August 8, 2008, statement,[105] and an interview with Bob Woodruff of ABC News, Edwards admitted the affair with Hunter in 2006, but denied being the father of her child.

He acknowledged that he had been dishonest in denying the entire Enquirer story, admitting that some of it was true, but said that the affair ended long before the time of the child's conception.

[111] Reports surfaced in late 2011 in The National Enquirer and RadarOnline.com that Edwards asked his former mistress to move into his North Carolina home, where he had once lived with his wife.

[122] On May 24, 2011, ABC News and the New York Times reported that the U.S Department of Justice's Public Integrity Section had conducted a two-year investigation into whether Edwards had used more than $1 million in political donations to hide his affair and planned to pursue criminal charges for alleged violations of campaign finance laws.