Mr. Edwards stands accused of misusing campaign money to hide both an affair with a former campaign videographer and the child they conceived as he made his run for the 2008 Democratic nomination for president. The trial in nearby Greensboro, which Judge Catherine C. Eagles of Federal District Court expects to take six weeks, promises to continue the long story of Mr. Edwards’s derailed career and scarred personal life. But for the government, the case goes beyond the messiness of an affair that Mr. Edwards repeatedly denied, even as his wife, Elizabeth, was suffering from the cancer that eventually took her life in 2010. Prosecutors have been unyielding in their pursuit of a case that they say represents a clear and flagrant misuse of $925,000 that they argue was used to try to influence the outcome of the election. If he is convicted on all six counts, Mr. Edwards, 58, faces up to 30 years in prison and $1.5 million in fines. The government’s case is simple: Mr. Edwards knowingly accepted the money from two wealthy donors and used it to keep information from the public that would have surely torpedoed his presidential campaign. Thus, the money was a campaign contribution and its use a conspiracy. Mr. Edwards’s legal team rejects that argument entirely: the money was a gift from two friends and was intended to help a candidate they believed in deal with a personal problem. Mr. Edwards, his lawyers say, was not aware of the donations. They will try to characterize the case as being politically motivated. It began under the tenure of George Holding, a Republican appointee of President George W. Bush who stayed on as a United States attorney under the Obama administration to bring the case to trial. Mr. Holding had long been politically hostile to Mr. Edwards, the defense lawyers say, and hoped the case would help his political ambitions. Mr. Holding retired last year, a month after securing Mr. Edward’s indictments, and then announced he was running for Congress in 2012. But some political strategists dismiss the defense’s theory as mere posturing. The case has little political relevance, they say, especially so long after the alleged crimes were committed. “Nobody cares about what’s happening to John Edwards anymore — he’s old news,” said Donnie Fowler, a technology and political consultant who has worked for seven presidential candidates and was a senior adviser to President Obama. “He’s not relevant to the Democrats in Washington or state capitals. And attacking John Edwards for the Republicans would be like attacking George McGovern.” Still, students of campaign finance will look to the trial for new interpretations of how money from political action committees and other campaign-related donations can be spent, especially as the growing influence of “super PACs” is playing out in the 2012 presidential election. The government’s legal team, which David V. Harbach II of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section is directing, faces a lineup of high-powered white-collar criminal defense lawyers led by Abbe D. Lowell, a former Justice Department official and Washington insider. Although the defense strategy has yet to be fully revealed, Mr. Lowell will certainly be looking to lay the groundwork for a potential appeal. It is not clear whether Mr. Edwards will testify or to what extent will participate in his defense. Mr. Edwards, who deposed Monica Lewinsky during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, was considered such a skilled trial lawyer that others in the profession would rush to catch his closing arguments. Of course, it will be hard for both sides to keep the focus on the intricacies of campaign finance law when the central story of the trial hangs on a dying wife, an illicit affair and an attempted cover-up thought to be so elaborate that Mr. Edwards persuaded a loyal campaign aide, Andrew Young, to claim paternity and go underground with his own family and Rielle Hunter, Mr. Edwards’s paramour.
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