Ex-Edwards aide had awkward run-in with mistress

During a trip in September 2007, Mr. Davis said, he went to Mr. Edwards‘ hotel room to retrieve a cellphone that the candidate had borrowed from him. When he got to the room, he could hear what sounded like a speakerphone conversation through the door, and he was able to discern both Mr. Edwards‘ and Ms. Hunter’s voices.

“I heard him ask Rielle if she was showing yet,” Mr. Davis said. Ms. Hunter gave birth to Mr. Edwards‘ child the following February. The girl, now 4, lives with her mother in Charlotte, N.C.

Just how much Mr. Edwards knew about the effort to keep his pregnant mistress — and later his baby — hidden from the public is at the heart of the government’s criminal case. After tabloid reporters tracked down Ms. Hunter in New Jersey in September 2007, one of Mr. Edwards‘ closest aides, Andrew Young, brought Ms. Hunter to live with his wife and three children in Chapel Hill, a few miles from the sprawling estate Mr. Edwards shared with his family.

Mr. Young was so well known for doing anything Mr. Edwards might ask of him, other staffers used the snarky nickname “Rose Petals” behind his back.

When reporters photographed the pregnant Ms. Hunter outside a grocery story that December, Mr. Young and his wife flew with Ms. Hunter on a private jet to Florida, and they checked into a luxury waterfront hotel. It was the start of a cross-country odyssey of stays in posh resorts and rented mansions paid for by Mr. Edwards‘ campaign finance chairman, a wealthy Texas lawyer named Fred Baron.

During his testimony, Mr. Davis recounted a conversation he heard between Mr. Baron and Mr. Edwards in the fall of 2007 on the finance chairman’s jet. Mr. Baron’s plane was routinely used to fly Mr. Edwards to political events in Iowa, New Hampshire and other early primary states.

Mr. Davis said he couldn’t remember the exact date but knew the conversation occurred after a tabloid story exposing Mr. Edwards‘ affair.

With Mr. Davis sitting inches away, the aide testified, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Baron discussed Hunter.

Mr. Davis recalled that Mr. Baron told Mr. Edwards that “the press wasn’t going to find Ms. Hunter because of the way he was moving her around so much.”

Mr. Davis, who by then knew the stories about the affair and pregnancy were true, said he told Mr. Baron to stop talking.

“I didn’t want to be aware of this,” Mr. Davis testified.

Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.