Legal News

Another Look at Fred Baron, the Man at the Middle of the Edwards Flap

By Jennifer Forsyth

As Fred Baron, a big Democratic fundraiser and one of the kings of asbestos litigation, found himself increasingly in the spotlight for his moving of John Edwards’ mistress across the country, his explanations became more confusing and his memory became more faltering. See his comments in this interview with the NYT. Now, he appears to have clammed up, leaving many unanswered questions about why he unilaterally decided to move not only the mistress, Rielle Hunter, from Chapel Hill, N.C. to California, but also Andrew Young and his family. Young is the campaign worker of the two-time presidential candidate who claims to have fathered Hunter’s child.

Since Baron hasn’t returned our phone calls, a colleague at Baron’s former firm, Baron & Budd, Brent Rosenthal, stepped in to give us a better picture of Baron. Rosenthal makes clear that he hasn’t talked to Baron about Edwards’s mistress, but says that Baron is the kind of person who would step in to clean up a mess. “He is an incredibly loyal person. So I think he would do anything he could to protect somebody he believes deserves his support. No. 2., if he were to tell Edwards, then Edwards would then have some link and some knowledge of it. So if this was a way of protecting Edwards, I think it only makes sense to withhold that from the candidate.”

Yet, Rosenthal says that Baron likely would have made sure that he wasn’t violating campaign finance laws in assisting Hunter or Young (see Saturday’s WSJ story). “I don’t think his loyalty would extend to violating the law or to blatantly misrepresenting something to a candidate or to the person who is employing him. But I do think he would do whatever it took within those limits to protect someone he was loyal to.”

Rosenthal says Baron was an Edwards supporter from the early days of his first campaign for the presidency and that Baron seemed to grasp how important it was that Edwards not have any skeletons in his closet, given the recent Clinton sex scandal. “Fred said he had specifically assured himself that there was nothing of the kind—now this was long before Rielle. But he had paid attention to that issue, in other words, and was sensitive to the issue.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on August 19, 2008 (boomark / email).