RALEIGH, N.C.- The former mistress of John Edwards spent much of the day in a federal courthouse in Raleigh where a grand jury was meeting Thursday, at a time when federal investigators are examining the two-time presidential candidate’s finances.

Rielle Hunter walked into the building in the morning through a back entrance, holding a young child.

Edwards adamantly denied during a confessional interview with ABC News last summer that he had fathered a child with Hunter, and he welcomed a paternity test. His wife, Elizabeth, has said while promoting her book that she doesn’t know if her husband is the father.

Former Edwards aide Andrew Young, who made a similar courthouse visit while the grand jury was sitting last month, said in 2007 he was the child’s father. Hunter said around the same that Young was the father and the birth certificate does not list a father’s name.

Hunter’s attorney, Michael Critchley, said outside the courthouse he did not expect his client to comment when she emerges.

Edwards has admitted to an affair with Hunter that he says ended in 2006. That year, Edwards’ political action committee paid Hunter’s video production firm $100,000 for work. Then the committee paid another $14,086 on April 1, 2007.

Edwards, a North Carolina senator from 1998 until his vice presidential bid in 2004, acknowledged in May that federal investigators are looking into how he used campaign funds. Grand jury proceedings are secret, and the U.S. attorney’s office in Raleigh has declined to confirm or deny an investigation.

Young hasn’t spoken publicly since saying he was the father in 2007 and has repeatedly ignored reporter requests for interviews.

WASHINGTON – John Edwards’ mistress received $100,000 from his political action committee in an 18-week span in 2006, payments that raise this question: Can politicians use PACs as their own personal piggy banks?

From staging fundraisers in Las Vegas to financing ski trips, current and former lawmakers have spent PAC money on a broad range of seemingly personal activities over the years, all the while maintaining they are doing so for strictly political purposes.

In the wake of the disclosure of Edwards’ affair with videographer Rielle Hunter, Edwards has acknowledged a federal criminal investigation is under way into his presidential campaign fund.

But it was the former senator’s PAC – which is separate from the campaign – that paid $114,000 in 2006 and early 2007 to Hunter’s Midline Groove Productions. Hunter shot videos of Edwards as he spread the populist message he subsequently would adopt in his presidential campaign.

PACs like Edwards’ One America Committee have legal flexibility that campaign committees do not.

It is illegal under federal election law to convert campaign funds to personal use. But that prohibition doesn’t extend to PACs in most cases, according to the Federal Election Commission, which in March asked Congress to tighten the law.

The FEC “has seen a substantial number of instances where individuals with access to the funds received by political committees have used such funds to make unauthorized disbursements to pay for their own personal expenses,” the FEC said in its legislative recommendation to Congress.

Leadership PACs are “a form of giant slush fund; they should be banned,” said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a campaign money watchdog group.

Their political purpose enables PACs to receive tax-exempt status.

“If a politician uses a PAC as a piggy bank for personal expenses he better make sure to accurately disclose the payments on FEC forms and pay taxes on the income,” says Jan Baran, a top campaign finance lawyer in Washington and a partner at Wiley Rein LLP.

Edwards could face a number of issues in the criminal investigation, whose existence he confirmed on May 3.

Was the purpose of the PAC money to Hunter to pay for a handful of online videos on Edwards’ travels? That would seem to be the case based on the PAC’s reports to the FEC. The money to Hunter’s production company was for “Website/Internet Services,” the reports state.

But if the money were for some other purpose, that could amount to a criminal act by those who caused incorrect information to be filed with the FEC.

Another issue surrounds the final $14,000 PAC payment to Hunter on April 1, 2007, from One America, which didn’t have enough money on hand at the start of the day to make the payment, according to records filed with the FEC.

The Edwards presidential campaign injected $14,034.61 into the PAC that day for a “furniture purchase,” the records state. That put enough money in the political action committee account to pay Hunter $14,086.50 the same day.

The Edwards camp has said the money from the PAC was exchanged for 100 hours of unused videotape Hunter shot.

It could be a criminal act if the real purpose was something else, such as an effort to keep the videographer quiet about the affair.

When Edwards disclosed the existence of the criminal investigation early this month, he said in a statement that he was “confident that no funds from my campaign were used improperly.”

This week, Elizabeth Edwards seconded her husband’s assertion, saying that “it’s just not possible” that campaign funds were paid to Hunter.

“The way campaign funds are distributed is all a matter of record,” Elizabeth Edwards said on NBC’s “Today.”

The Justice Department prosecutes the personal use of campaign funds.

Among high-profile politicians who have gotten into legal trouble over personal use of campaign funds are former House Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski, D-Ill., and former Rep. James Traficant, D-Ohio. Rostenkowski ultimately pleaded guilty to mail fraud; Traficant was convicted of taking bribes and kickbacks from businessmen and his own staff.

More recently, a former congressional candidate in Kansas pleaded guilty to misusing campaign funds to cover a check for the down payment on a home.

In her new book, Elizabeth Edwards describes her understanding of the first meeting between her husband and Hunter, writing that Hunter greeted Edwards with the come-on line, “You are so hot,” after waiting for him outside a New York hotel.

That was followed within months by Edwards going on the road, with Hunter accompanying him to key primary states. One America paid the videographer $100,000 from July to November 2006, seven weeks before Edwards declared his candidacy.

Between John and Elizabeth Edwards they make up the political figures with the highest and least levels of popularity with North Carolina voters of anyone PPP has polled on in the last year, the PPP reports.

WASHINGTON  – Elizabeth Edwards says if she had known her husband John was having an affair rather than her initial belief that he’d had just a single betrayal, she would have strongly resisted his running for president again.

Edwards said “I do love him” and also said in a nationally broadcast interview that’s the reason she has remained with Edwards despite his admitted affair with videographer Reille Hunter.

Edwards went on NBC’s “Today” show Monday to discuss “Resilience,” the book she has written about her battle with incurable breast cancer and her discovery last year that her husband had been involved in an affair with Hunter.

Asked at one point if she wrote the book to strike back at her husband, Edwards said she actually had started it well before she learned that Edwards’ involvement with Hunter was more than a one-night stand.

Edwards said, “I only knew about a single night, a single moment of weakness.” She said that if she’d known about a more involved relationship, “I probably would have been more adamant about his not running.”

Elizabeth Edwards’ media campaign, with more TV appearances and book signings scheduled, is sparking a backlash, the N&O reports.

CHICAGO – Elizabeth Edwards tells talk show host Oprah Winfrey that it’s a “complicated question” if she still is in love with her husband, former presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. John Edwards, after his admitted affair.

In an episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” to air Thursday, Winfrey asks Edwards, “Are you still in love with him?”

Edwards responds, “You know, that’s a complicated question,” in an excerpt provided in advance to The Associated Press by Harpo Productions.

Winfrey also asks Edwards, “Is it a day by day thing?” And Edwards says, “Neither one of us is out the door so I guess it’s day by day, but maybe it’s month by month.”

The talk-show host visited the Edwards family at the Chapel Hill, N.C., home where the couple live with their children, Cate, Jack and Emma Claire. Winfrey interviewed Elizabeth Edwards about her relationship with her husband, his affair and her battle with terminal cancer. The interview will appear on Winfrey’s television show and there will be a companion piece in the June issue of “O”
magazine.

Elizabeth Edwards’ memoir “Resilience” is to be published this month.

A Harpo spokeswoman said the only caveat to the interview was that Winfrey could not mention John Edwards’ mistress, videographer Rielle Hunter, by name. Winfrey also spoke with John Edwards, however excerpts of his interview were not provided.

John Edwards went public with the affair in August after the National Enquirer reported he was the father of Hunter’s daughter. He has denied paternity.

Elizabeth Edwards addressed that speculation with Winfrey.

“That’s what I understand,” Edwards said. “I’ve seen a picture of the baby. I have no idea. It doesn’t look like my children but I don’t have any idea.”

She also describes Hunter as being different from both her and her husband.

“We’re basically old-fashioned people,” Edwards said in “O” magazine. “So, this was a pretty big leap for him. Maybe it’s being so different is what was attractive.”

Edwards was laying the groundwork for a presidential campaign when he hired Hunter to shoot videos of him. He said the affair with Hunter began and ended that year, although Hunter was seen on the campaign trail until the final days of 2006.

Edwards wrote in her new book that news of her husband’s affair made her cry, scream and throw up in a bathroom. She told Winfrey she had asked her husband for one gift when they were married 31 years ago.

“I wanted him to be faithful to me,” Edwards said. “It was enormously important to me.”

RALEIGH, N.C. – His once-prominent political career is buried and the turmoil of his marriage is playing out in public. Now, John Edwards is facing a federal inquiry.

The two-time Democratic presidential candidate acknowledged Sunday that investigators are assessing how he spent his campaign funds – a subject that could carry his extramarital affair from the tabloids to the courtroom. Edwards’ political action committee paid more than $100,000 for video production to the firm of the woman with whom Edwards had an affair.

The former North Carolina senator said in a carefully worded statement that he is cooperating.

“I am confident that no funds from my campaign were used improperly,” Edwards said in the statement. “However, I know that it is the role of government to ensure that this is true. We have made available to the United States both the people and the information necessary to help them get the issue resolved efficiently and in a timely matter.”

While Edwards focused his comment on campaign funds, he also had a range of other fundraising organizations – including two nonprofits and a poverty center at his alma mater – that have come under scrutiny.

Chief among them was the PAC that paid Rielle Hunter’s company for several months in 2006 for Web videos that documented Edwards’ travels and advocacy in the months leading up to his 2008 presidential campaign. The committee also paid her firm an additional $14,086.50 on April 1, 2007.

NEW YORK  – Elizabeth Edwards writes in a new memoir that news of her husband’s affair made her vomit in a bathroom.

In the book scheduled to be published May 12, Edwards says her husband, John, admitted to the betrayal just days after declaring his run for president in 2006. She says she wanted him to drop out of the race to protect the family from media scrutiny, but stood by his side anyway.

The former North Carolina senator went public with the affair in August after the National Enquirer reported he was the father of videographer Rielle Hunter’s daughter.

Elizabeth Edwards never identifies Hunter by name. But she says that while her life may be tragic, Hunter’s is “pathetic.”

An advance copy of the book, “Resilience,” was obtained by the New York Daily News.

Former U.S. Sen. John Edwards spoke about poverty at Brown University Tuesday night, but declined to speak about his personal life.