1. Johnny Reid Edwards was born on June 10,1953 and is an American lawyer and former politician who represented North Carolina in the United States Senate from 1999 to 2005.
79 Facts About John Edwards
1. 2.
John Edwards was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 and 2008.
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John Edwards defeated the incumbent Republican Lauch Faircloth in North Carolina's 1998 Senate election.
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John Edwards suspended his campaign shortly after Super Tuesday, and later accepted the Democratic vice presidential nomination.
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John Edwards was a consultant for Fortress Investment Group LLC.
6.
John Edwards was found not guilty on one count, and the judge declared a mistrial on the remaining five charges, as the jury was unable to come to an agreement.
7.
Since the death of Kay Hagan on October 28,2019, John Edwards is the only surviving former Democratic senator from North Carolina.
8.
John Edwards's mother had a roadside antique-finishing business and then worked as a letter carrier when his father left his job.
9.
John Edwards attended Clemson University for one semester before transferring to North Carolina State University.
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John Edwards graduated from NCSU with high honors with a bachelor's degree in textile technology and a 3.8 GPA in 1974, and later earned his Juris Doctor from the University of North Carolina School of Law with honors.
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In 1984, John 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.
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Nevertheless, John 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.
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In other cases, John Edwards sued the American Red Cross three times, alleging transmission of AIDS through tainted blood products, resulting in a confidential settlement each time, and defended a North Carolina newspaper against a libel charge.
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John Edwards filed at least twenty similar lawsuits in the years following, and achieved verdicts and settlements of more than $60 million for his clients.
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In 1993, John Edwards began his own firm in Raleigh with a friend, David Kirby.
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John Edwards became known as the top plaintiffs' attorney in North Carolina.
17.
John Edwards was disemboweled by the suction power of the pool drain pump when she sat on an open pool drain whose protective cover had been removed by other children at the pool, after the swim club had failed to install the cover properly.
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John Edwards settled for the $25 million while the jury was deliberating additional punitive damages, rather than risk a further award.
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The size of the jury award was unprecedented, and John Edwards did receive the standard one-third-plus-expenses fee typical of contingency cases.
20.
In December 2003, during his first presidential campaign, Edwards published Four Trials, an autobiographical book focusing on cases from his legal career.
21.
John Edwards promotes programs to eliminate poverty in the United States, including arguing in favor of creating one million housing vouchers over five years in order to place poor people in middle-class neighborhoods.
22.
John Edwards denounced the "troop surge" in Iraq, was a proponent for withdrawal, and urged Congress to withhold funding for the war without a withdrawal timetable.
23.
John Edwards endorsed efforts to slow down global warming and was the first presidential candidate to describe his campaign as carbon-neutral.
24.
John Edwards won election to the US Senate in 1998 as a Democrat running against incumbent Republican Senator Lauch Faircloth.
25.
John Edwards served alongside fellow Republican Senator Jesse Helms until Helms left office in 2003, having chosen to not seek reelection in 2002.
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On October 10,2004, John Edwards further defended his vote during an appearance on Meet the Press:.
27.
John Edwards subsequently changed his mind about the war and apologized for that military authorization vote.
28.
John Edwards was the first person to introduce comprehensive anti-spyware legislation with the Spyware Control and Privacy Protection Act.
29.
John Edwards advocated rolling back the Bush administration's tax cuts and ending mandatory minimum sentencing for non-violent offenders.
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John Edwards generally supported expanding legal immigration to the United States while working with Mexico to provide better border security and stop illegal trafficking.
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John Edwards served on the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the US Senate Committee on Judiciary, and was a member of the New Democrat Coalition.
32.
John 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.
33.
In February 2005, John Edwards headlined the "100 Club" Dinner, a major fundraiser for the New Hampshire Democratic Party.
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That same month, John Edwards was appointed as director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for studying ways to move people out of poverty.
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On March 21,2005, John Edwards recorded his first podcast with his wife.
36.
John Edwards was opposed to the nomination of Justice Samuel Alito as an Associate Justice and Judge Charles Pickering's appointment to the Federal bench.
37.
John Edwards 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 ; and a program modeled on the Works Progress Administration to rehabilitate the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina.
38.
John Edwards was co-chair of a Council on Foreign Relations task force on United States-Russia relations alongside Republican Jack Kemp, a former congressman, Cabinet official and vice presidential nominee.
39.
In October 2005, John Edwards joined the Wall Street investment firm Fortress Investment Group as a senior adviser and consultant, a position for which a close aide reported he received an annual salary of $500,000.
40.
Fortress owned a major stake in Green Tree Servicing LLC, which rose to prominence in the 1990s selling subprime loans to mobile-home owners and now services subprime loans originated by others, but in an interview John Edwards said he was unaware of this.
41.
John 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.
42.
John Edwards was invited to and attended the 2024 Democratic National Convention, which was the first DNC he attended since his Vice-Presidential nomination in Boston, twenty years earlier.
43.
In 2000, John Edwards unofficially began his presidential campaign when he began to seek speaking engagements in Iowa, the site of the nation's first party caucuses.
44.
On January 2,2003, John Edwards began fundraising without officially campaigning by forming an exploratory committee.
45.
On September 15,2003, John 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.
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The next morning, John Edwards made the announcement officially from his hometown.
47.
John Edwards declined to run for reelection to the Senate in order to focus on his presidential run.
48.
John Edwards's campaign was chaired by North Carolina Democratic activist Ed Turlington.
49.
John Edwards struggled to gain substantial support, but his poll numbers began to rise steadily weeks before the Iowa caucuses.
50.
John Edwards garnered the second-largest number of second-place finishes, again falling behind Clark.
51.
John Edwards largely avoided attacking Kerry until a February 29,2004, debate in New York, in which he characterized him as a "Washington insider" and mocked Kerry's plan to form a committee to examine trade agreements.
52.
In Georgia, John Edwards finished only slightly behind Kerry but, failing to win a single state, chose to withdraw from the race.
53.
John Edwards did win the presidential straw poll conducted by the Independence Party of Minnesota.
54.
On July 6,2004, Kerry announced that John Edwards would be his running mate; the decision was widely hailed in public opinion polls and by Democratic leaders.
55.
Videotape later surfaced of Cheney and John Edwards shaking hands off-camera during a taping of Meet the Press on April 8,2001.
56.
On January 8,2003, they met when John Edwards accompanied then-Senator Elizabeth Dole to her swearing-in while Cheney was President of the Senate.
57.
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.
58.
John Edwards stated that his main goals were eliminating poverty, fighting global warming, providing universal health care, and withdrawing troops from Iraq.
59.
John Edwards was first to boycott a Fox News-sponsored presidential debate in March 2007.
60.
On January 30,2008, following his primary and caucus losses, John Edwards announced that he was suspending his campaign for the presidency.
61.
John Edwards did not initially endorse either Clinton or Obama, saying they both had pledged to carry forward his central campaign theme of ending poverty in America.
62.
On May 14,2008, John Edwards officially endorsed Senator Obama at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
63.
On November 3,2004, Elizabeth John Edwards revealed that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer.
64.
John Edwards was treated by chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and continued to work within the Democratic Party and her husband's One America Committee.
65.
John Edwards's book is about the struggles of her marriage and how she was affected by her husband's affair.
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In Washington, DC, John Edwards lived on Embassy Row, at 2215 30th Street NW.
67.
The story was not widely covered by the press for some time, until, after initially denying the allegations, John Edwards admitted the affair.
68.
John Edwards 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.
69.
John Edwards further said he was willing to take a paternity test, but Hunter responded that she would not be party to a DNA test "now or in the future".
70.
Young later renounced that statement, instead alleging that John Edwards always knew he was the child's father and had pleaded with him to falsely accept responsibility.
71.
On January 21,2010, John Edwards issued a press release to admit that he fathered Hunter's child.
72.
In May 2009, newspapers reported that John Edwards's campaign was being investigated for conversion of campaign money to personal use related to the affair.
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John Edwards said that the campaign was complying with the inquiry.
74.
In March 2011, voicemail messages allegedly left by John Edwards were obtained, which Young says prove that Edwards arranged the cover-up of his affair with Hunter.
75.
On May 24,2011, ABC News and the New York Times reported that the USDepartment of Justice's Public Integrity Section had conducted a two-year investigation into whether John 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.
76.
On June 3,2011, John Edwards was indicted by a federal grand jury in North Carolina on six felony charges, including four counts of collecting illegal campaign contributions, one count of conspiracy, and one count of making false statements.
77.
John Edwards's trial began on April 23,2012, as he faced up to 30 years in prison and a $1.5 million fine.
78.
John Edwards's lawyers claimed the money was used, and that the campaign did not receive all the funds to which it was entitled, but the Commission rejected the arguments.
79.
On May 31,2012, John Edwards was found not guilty on Count 3, illegal use of campaign funding, while mistrials were declared on all other counts against him.